Remember the .jpg
Before a game is officially released or about to be released, most game manufacturers will apply for a URL domain name based on the game name in advance, thus playing a role in promoting and guiding players, either registering an official website or acquiring an existing website. Both the player community and the game media will see the emergence of new websites as a reliable source of information for inferring manufacturers and game trends.
However, in the months and even years after the game's release, the number of visitors to these sites will continue to decrease as many as the number of people who are playing the game, and if there is no continuous update or news of the new series, the website will sooner or later fall into a situation of no one.' At this point, the vendor's attitude towards these sites may be equivalent to their attitude towards the game itself.
As for Konami, who is often greeted with the most "sincere" greetings from players, there is obviously little interest in this kind of thing. Although on the company's official website, Konami has left a place for the long-established horror game Silent Hill series; the domain name that netizens most easily associate with the game's name: silenthill.com, has long been preemptively registered.
The Konami website (konami.com) currently uses the Silent Hill portal
Now when we visit silenthill.com, we can only see a screenshot from a real tweet from Former Art Director Ofan's Silent Hill series, Hideta Ito, who posted on Feb. 21: "I wish I had never designed his* Pyramid Head."
Extrapolating from the jet lag, the screenshot is in the Western Hemisphere
"Pyramid Head" is more commonly known as "Triangle Head" in China, and is the "Silent Hill" series, one of the most classic monster shapes in the history of horror games, originally appearing in "Silent Hill 2".
The monsters in "Silent Hill 2" are all designed by Ito, and from the setting point of view, they are the embodiment of the subconscious of the protagonist James, and the triangle head is the final BOSS tailored to James's life experience, which continues to torture the nerves of James and the players throughout the game process.
Ito's follow-up tweet said he didn't intend to say why he regretted it, but silent hill and it were well known to loyal fans of Silent Hill and Ito himself. One of the fans wrote in a reply, "Konami would never make another Silent Hill without a triangle head; but the triangle head should belong only to James."
For years, Ito has been complaining on social media about Konami's abuse of the triangle head image. According to Ito's personal account, after the release of "Silent Hill 2", Ito has "grown tired of making horror games", but Konami not only asked him to continue to work on the monster design of subsequent works, but also asked him to make the triangle head into the game as much as possible with different names and appearances, which undoubtedly violated the design concept and original intention of the triangle head.
"They asked me to make Triangle Head appear in the sequel"
"The triangle head can only be a James-specific illusion"
Konami did not take Ito's dissatisfaction into account, allowing the triangle head to appear in the games, movies, literary works, spin-off comics, promotional advertisements, Pachinko, and even countless linkage works of other manufacturers that appeared in the follow-up to Silent Hill. PC Gamer reported that Ito had uploaded and self-deleted a tweet: "To use PH in many titles makes PH cheaper" (To use PH in many titles makes PH cheaper).
Launched in 2015, the theme of "Silent Hill 2" is Bai Qingge
Triangle Head's most recently popular cameo was in conjunction with Dead by Daylight
Spending so much ink on Ito's experience may seem off-topic, but the idea of posting this resentful tweet on silenthill.com website is enough to prove that the current owner of the domain is also a Silent Hill fan who has a lot of opinions about Konami.
In fact, it's not just Ito's grievances that are flipping through old accounts, silenthill.com domain names have been snapped up by unofficial sources, and it's not something that's happened recently.
The Web Archive of the Internet Archive Wayback Machine tells us that for at least February 2006 and August 2008, silenthill.com domain name corresponded to a small website promoting the Silent Hill game. Konami's licensed trademark does not appear on the webpage, and it is speculated that the domain name belonged to enthusiastic fans of Silent Hill at that time, not Konami.
In August 2008, silenthill.com transformed into a "comprehensive portal" that had nothing to do with the game and most netizens wanted to hide away just by seeing it.
The labels prepared for "Silent Hill" on the left have been tampered with as "dating, cars, entertainment, education, work, finance" and so on
On Wayback Machine, there are few web archives after 2009 and can't be opened normally, possibly because the site is unloved and lack of maintenance. It wasn't until August 3, 2019, a record that could be opened normally indicated that silenthill.com domain name was publicly available for sale for $9,835.
On December 6 of the same year, some netizens tracked that silenthill.com domain name had been acquired by unknown sources. After that, the site fell silent for a long time, and only those who visited would see a blank space.
Twitter @bobvids
The archive on February 5, 2021 shows that silenthill.com domain name has moved for the first time, posting a conceptual art picture of a triangular head and adding a paragraph: "He Was First". Until Ito's tweet took over, Triangle Head stood on this page for a whole year.
Combined with the specific time period - in February 2021, Capcom's Resident Evil: Village has launched a trailer and demo, and the female vampire Timtrescu in the game has become very popular on the Internet because of her unique charm.
Hope someone remembers her
It is not difficult to judge that the people who bought the domain name are complaining about triangle heads and the "Silent Hill" series, or are jealous that "Resident Evil", an IP that has also been some years old, can still launch a new work. The seemingly unclear meaning of the text actually says that the triangle head is the first monster to fire out of the circle in the horror game.
Today, the website's label is still "He Was First", presumably forgetting to modify it
It's unclear which or which fans are so generous that they're willing to pour in tens of thousands of dollars just to buy the soon-to-be-forgotten silenthill.com, commemorate Silent Hill, satirize Konami, and let players have fun.
However, from beginning to end, Konami never realized the importance of this domain name, and since the collapse of the high-profile "P.T. in 2015", Konami has not given any news about the orthodox sequel to "Silent Hill", and most likely has not bought silenthill.com domain name to save face.