Silent Hill’s Masahiro Ito Says Skipping Love For Pyramid Head Cost Him

Masahiro Ito, the artist who designed Pyramid Head for Silent Hill 2, posted on X on September 4 that he thinks giving up on dating during his years at Konami left him worse off. “The 8 years I spent developing Silent Hill 1, 2 & 3 at Konami, I gave up on getting a girlfriend,” reads the tweet, and he followed it with a line making clear this wasn’t a throwaway joke.

“Never even went on a single date w/ a lady,” he wrote, adding that he “sacrificed my days off & slept on cardboards spread out on the floor” during the development years. He then said he “probably would have been happier” had he found a partner and settled down earlier, according to GamesRadar+, which flagged the new post.

Fans on X piled into the replies with support, and one line stuck out enough that people are still quoting it back at him today:

Not His First Time Saying It

This isn’t a new confession from Ito. Back in October 2024, during a Q&A with followers on X, he said much the same thing about the years he spent studying art and building Team Silent’s first three games. “I wanted to learn oil painting, but majored in graphic design at my art university, studying oil on my own. I was born in a needy family, I had no money to buy oil colours/mediums, so I was picking them up on the corridors,” Ito wrote, as reported by TheGamer.

In that same thread he was blunt about the trade-off: “I’m not rich. Also, I’m not the copyright holder of Pyramid Head or Bubble Nurse.” When a fan offered a “your family must be proud” comment, Ito replied, “I have no family, but thanks so much!”

He Built Pyramid Head’s Cutscenes Alone

Part of why the sacrifice is believable is the workload Ito describes carrying solo. He said he could model and animate every creature in Silent Hill 2 himself, and he “also thought of all of Pyramid Head’s cutscenes and built them by myself”, on top of learning 3D modelling and animation from scratch during the first game’s development.

That’s a heavy load for one artist on a PS2-era title, and it lines up with why Pyramid Head still gets cited as one of horror gaming’s most effective designs a quarter-century on. Konami’s Silent Hill 2 Remake, which shipped in 2024 with Ito consulting on creature work, leaned on that same silhouette rather than reinventing it.

No Copyright Stake in His Own Monster

Here’s the part that gives the story an edge beyond a sad tweet. Ito has already confirmed he doesn’t hold the copyright on Pyramid Head, meaning every crossover appearance, every piece of merch, every re-release runs through Konami with no ownership stake for the artist who built the character frame by frame.

Our view: that context matters more than the tweet on its own. It’s one thing to give up eight years of dating to define a genre. It’s another to do it for a character you don’t legally own, while the publisher keeps bringing him back for guest spots decades later.

Where This Leaves Ito Now

Ito hasn’t said whether the September 4 post reflects a specific event or just a rough week. He’s still active on the account, still replying to fans, and still the name Konami’s marketing turns to whenever Pyramid Head resurfaces. No further comment from Konami accompanied the post, and none was expected. This one’s between Ito and the timeline he’s been posting to for years.