KonamiIn late August, Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater lands on PC and consoles, but not every part of the game will be ready at launch. Konami has already announced that a new multiplayer mode is coming to the game, and it’s now saying we’ll have to wait a bit longer to try out the online mode that’s been described as a particularly high-stakes version of hide-and-seek.Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is still on track to launch on August 28, but it will be missing its Fox Hunt online multiplayer mode. Konami says that part of the game will be added in a patch, but it’s not saying yet exactly how long the wait for its arrival will be. If all goes according to Konami’s plan, though, the multiplayer patch will arrive later this fall, so the wait to play it should be just a few months at most.Konami hasn’t spelled out exactly how the new mode, called Fox Hunt, will work, but says that it won’t be the same as the previous Metal Gear Online. MGO was a multiplayer spinoff included with Metal Gear Solid 3 and later expanded for Metal Gear Solid 4 that offered a large selection of different modes. A traditional deathmatch was available, along with variants including a battle royale-inspired version that gave players stealth camo and slowly forced them together by restricting the play space. The game shut down in 2012.The planned multiplayer mode for Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater won’t be anywhere near as large as MGO, but it sounds interesting nonetheless. Konami shared a short clip of gameplay in the new mode when it was announced back in June, showing a player using camouflage to sneak through an enemy base.Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater introduces a brand-new multiplayer mode — just a little late. | Konami“Based on the iconic stealth and survival elements of the Metal Gear series, we are taking camouflage and hide and go seek to the next level,” Yu Sahara, director of the Fox Hunt mode, said. “We challenged ourselves to make something unique that is more than just a shootout. We’ve used that back-and-forth tension of staying hidden or searching out the enemy to create an online experience unique to Metal Gear.”According to Sahara, the studio is switching to a new type of multiplayer mode rather than repeating the popular MGO formula simply because multiplayer games themselves have changed a lot since the earlier game’s release.“We very much appreciate all the long-time fans of MGO who have always wanted to see it make a comeback, but the landscape of multiplayer games has changed a lot since MGO,” he said. “It took a lot of careful consideration to think about what a new online mode should look like."Metal Gear Online isn’t returning, but its replacement could be just as exciting. | KonamiThat might be a letdown for anyone who was a fan of the original modes included with MGO, but it could end up being more interesting in the end. Sahara is right about multiplayer games being in a different place than they were when MGO’s servers shut down in 2012. There’s a lot more competition, for one thing, which has left many recent multiplayer games struggling to find their audience. To make matters worse, the dominance of massive live-service shooters like Fortnite means some players are less likely to take a chance on a new title when they’ve already sunk dozens or hundreds of hours into one constantly updating option.The return of MGO would definitely be well received by a lot of players, but it’s understandable that Konami wouldn’t want to take another chance on it after already shutting down its servers once. There are plenty of multiplayer shooters to choose from anyway, and while none of them offers exactly what MGO did, Fox Hunt could be an opportunity to make something radically different when it launches later in 2025.Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater will be released on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on August 28, 2025.