Metal Gear Solid 5's Nuclear Disarmament Could Actually Be Impossible

Metal Gear Solid V's multiplayer component--Metal Gear Online--featured a pretty terrifying mechanic that allowed you to stockpile nuclear weapons and potentially use them against other players in the event of an invasion. It was long believed that through cooperation and trust, players could each dismantle their own nuclear arsenal and receive a shared reward, but it now appears that could be literally impossible. The manner in which this was discovered, however, might be more interesting than the revelation itself.

Here's how it was supposed to work. On a particular platform (the game did not support cross-play), if all players completed total nuclear disarmament, there would be a special event unlocked. It would be accessible to anyone who had finished the game's final story mission and has not attempted to build more nuclear weapons. Initially found via dataminers, it included a lengthy cinematic that celebrated a new era for peace.

As featured (via VGC) on an episode of Did You Know Gaming?, it appears this dream is permanently dead. Though initially it appeared the task was accomplished by PS3 users back in 2020, Konami disputed this claim with a mention of "improper conduct" of some sort. That seemed like a way to wiggle out of actually allowing the event to take place, but Konami was right.

The leader of the anti-nuke group said they discovered a number of nukes that didn't seem to belong to any player, likely people banned from the game but with their online assets kept on the servers. This would, it seem, make their dismantling impossible, so they took more drastic (and forbidden) measures. The group's top members, according to Did You Know Gaming's findings, had actually created and kept secret a nuke-destroying bot that was forcing players' accounts to destroy stockpiles without their permission. The other volunteers affiliated with the group were unaware of this, instead believing their altruistic mission was a massive success and that nuclear weapons are being reduced as a result.

But the goal was seemingly never achievable due to these technical issues, which have reportedly gone unaddressed by Konami despite attempts to inform it of them. It was only through this unofficial, brute-force method that players were able to come close.

The issues here are certainly messed up, but also weirdly thematically appropriate for Metal Gear Solid. For decades, director Hideo Kojima's stories preached a message of total nuclear abolition in direct contrast to the Mutually Assured Destruction theory--that is, that having all major powers stockpile nuclear weapons acts as a deterrent from any of them actually using them, and thus actually prevents loss of life. Is this Konami's convoluted way of endorsing MAD and sticking it to Kojima? Or does it just not want to invest the resources to fix it? Perhaps the latter, but knowing Metal Gear fans, it's sure to be a point of conversation for years.