Metal Gear Solid V Alpha Allegedly Surfaces, Is Rendered Inaccessible

Last Updated: May 16th, 2022

According to a now-deleted post, an alleged Alpha build of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain has surfaced on Reddit. The post showed off multiple different screenshots from the alleged Alpha. The build could lead to several discoveries about Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain if it’s real and successfully decrypted, but for various reasons, that is unlikely ever to happen.

According to the post, the user had an alleged copy of the Metal Gear Solid V Alpha sitting on the HDD of a dying PS3 test kit. The user cloned the HDD, sold the test kit, and is now looking for a way to retrieve the data from the encrypted hard drive. However, the hard drive is only accessible by using a test kit with the same serial number as the one the drive was original in, rendering the alleged beta all but inaccessible.

Part of the reason this alpha was so interesting is that the game initially had a whole third chapter that was removed during development. It was around this time that Kojima and Konami were having a fallout internally, which led to several corners being cut and to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain being the final full game that Kojima made for Konami itself. Konami would later try to capitalize on the popularity of the series with the much-maligned spin-off, Metal Gear Survive, but hasn’t touched it since.

Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Post

It’s worth taking everything mentioned in the original Reddit post with an enormous grain of salt, though. Both the post itself and the account of the user that posted it are now gone from Reddit, and there’s no known reason for why this has happened. It could be that the user was told to take it down for legal reasons, or it could be that the user was lying about the whole affair. However, the screenshots posted do lend credibility to what is said in the post.