"We regret to inform that the release of the expansion pack Metal Gear Online Gene Expansion on 17th July 2008 was marred by major system related problems resulting in great inconvenience for all our customers,” reads a statement on MGO’s official site.

Konami has published a timelined report detailing the problems, noting that high user demand crippled the company’s servers shortly after the release of the Gene Expansion, leading to the temporary closure of aspects of the MGO service such as the MGO Shop and the Reward Shop.

Some users have found themselves unable to log into the game, while a number of customers’ payment records were incorrectly processed, although Konami says that all users who were overcharged for content have now been refunded following emergency maintainence.

Regarding its plans to tackle the ongoing problems, Konami says it will be implementing new strategies to reduce waiting time when making purchases from the MGO Shop, while there is currently no time schedule for the re-opening of the Reward Shop.

“We have been taking numerous corrective measures since the problems initially started, but unfortunately there are no permanent solutions we can announce at this present moment,” the company’s statement continues.

“We would like to take this opportunity to express our most sincere apologies for the problems that have affected all our  customers that have been with us since the Premiere Beta back in April.

“We are currently doing all in our powers to bring a permanent solution to the ongoing problems in the quickest time possible.”