Konami says it has no idea why Metal Gear Solid 5's nuclear disarmament event just unlocked
Trigger happy.
Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain's nuclear disarmament cutscene was suddenly unlocked over the weekend on PC - and publisher Konami says it has no idea why.
For more than two years, MGS5 players have known about the hidden cutscene, which was designed to be unlocked if all players worldwide choose to disarm their nukes in the game's Forward Operating Base multiplayer mode.
The cutscene itself, which you can see below, was found within the game's files and posted onto YouTube back in 2015. Most fans will have watched it already - but the mystery now is why it suddenly became available.
Addressing the issue on Twitter, publisher Konami confirmed that players had - of course - not suddenly turned into a bunch of pacifists: the seemingly-impossible condition of needing every player to disarm their nukes had not been met.
"We are still investigating, but can confirm that the event was triggered while the nuke count hadn't reached zero," Konami wrote.
So why had the cut-scene been triggered? Konami could not say.
"We would like to apologise for the inconvenience and reassure you that we will investigate the matter as well as take the necessary action to avoid this in the future," the publisher concluded.
Theories on why the cut-scene was unlocked range from Konami having accidentally pressed a button somewhere to it being a deliberate act to gain free publicity ahead of the upcoming release of Metal Gear Solid Survive.
But the most likely scenario, many fans seem to agree, is that an enterprising player somehow tricked Konami's server into thinking the nuke count was zero.
Fans have been tracking the PC version's nuke count for a while. Community-created nuke tracker tool MGSV Nuke watcher has a handy graph showing a sudden drop in nuke numbers in January which looks decidedly artificial.
If a fan has achieved this outcome through nefarious means - well, what better act to hack for than something celebrating world peace?