David Hayter, the man famous for bringing Solid Snake to life in Metal Gear Solid, is the latest to have an issue with Evo 2019's bad Tekken joke. Despite the organization's strong weekend overall, Evo 2019 was mostly marred by the company's attempt at a bad practical joke, briefly teasing the inclusion of Solid Snake in Tekken 7 with a quick clip aired for attendees that quickly spread like wildfire across the internet.
With the fighting game community suddenly ecstatic for such a significant crossover, Evo had to quickly scramble to its own social media channels to explain that the news was, in fact, fake - the company had wanted to pull a joke on the attendees of Evo 2019, not realizing that people would inevitably have filmed it and spread it beyond just the physical location of the vent. That explanation predictably ended in a lot of backlash for the company, with many fans outraged that it would toy with them on a weekend that has played host to many major FGC announcements before.
It's not just the fans that are angry, though - the voice actor behind Solid Snake himself now has a bone to pick with Evo. Apparently, Evo never consulted Bandai Namco, Konami, or David Hayter about using Solid Snake's likeness in the Tekken 7 prank announcement. That has led to Hayter openly criticizing the company and publicly scolding them on Twitter for using his voice to promote something he never signed off on:
Hayter is a legendary talent whose opinion holds a lot of sway in the video game community, so having him outwardly upset with Evo is a bad look for a company that's had more than its fair share of bad publicity over the past week. It's a shame, too, because Evo 2019 hosted some of the fighting game genre's biggest moments this year - whether it was GO1 crying after defeating rival SonicFox in Dragon Ball FighterZ or the absolutely mammoth numbers that Smash Ultimate's record-breaking Grand Finals managed to pull in, there was a lot to celebrate.
While that's been tarnished somewhat by the mess that Evo 2019 made with the Solid Snake tease, the good thing is that the FGC is a tightly-knit collection of passionate individuals who will inevitably end up focusing on the positives. Between the ill-advised prank and other allegations of misbehavior at the event, however, it's clear that however good Evo 2019 was for the community at large, the organization itself has some cleaning up to do before Evo 2020 rolls around next year.
Source: DavidBHayter/Twitter