Konami Corp has created some of the most memorable games of the last 30 years, including Frogger, Contra, Silent Hill and Metal Gear Solid, but the Japanese game studio’s reputation has suffered over the last year due to continued rumors about its falling out with Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima. Now, a new report by Japanese newspaper Nikkei (translation via Kotaku) details just how rough things are at Konami, and it looks like it might be a good thing that Kojima left.

According to Nikkei, the Metal Gear Solid V team, which was formerly known as Kojima Productions, does not have access to the internet from their workstations and are only capable of sending internal messages. All employees are also monitored by CCTV cameras during the day, allegedly to keep track of what employees are doing rather than for security concerns.

The sources speaking to Nikkei also said that Konami frequently shuffles developers who are no longer considered useful to other positions in the company, including janitorial positions or roles in the company’s slot machine factories. One such employee had previously been a producer in Konami’s game division, and he was later sent to work on slot machines, leaving him severely depressed.

Perhaps the publisher’s strangest policy is its email system, which assigns most employees with a randomized email address that is periodically changed. This is supposedly to prevent employees from being headhunted by other firms.

These revelations will do little to improve Konami’s already tainted reputation, which took a severe hit earlier this year when it began removing game maker Hideo Kojima’s name from the box art for his games. Konami also cancelled development on Silent Hills, which would have been a collaboration between Kojima and famed film director Guillermo del Toro. The studio even pulled the game’s playable trailer, PT, from the PlayStation store.

“Honestly that’s what surprised me,” Del Toro said at the time. “It was a sort of scorched earth approach. It was not a gentle and ambiguous cancellation.”

Del Toro has since stated that he still plans on collaborating with Kojima in the future, but the project will not be Silent Hills.  Konami has previously stated that it intends to move forward with both Silent Hills and the Metal Gear Solid series without Kojima’s involvement.

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