Thou Shalt Never Have P.T. Ever, Sayeth Konami
Well, they were serious. Mere days after Konami withdrew the Silent Hills demo P.T. from the Playstation Network, they took the unprecedented step of erasing it from the server completely. Anyone who technically owns the demo on their account now and tries to get it again receives an error message instead.
It was stated here that if you wanted to play P.T. in the future yet did not own a PS4 yet, you could simply go to the Playstation Store website, put the demo in your cart and check out with it. We had no reason to believe that wouldn’t work, and for the first few days after the demo disappeared, it did. In every other case where this has happened, a withdrawn piece of DLC or digital game could still be re-downloaded for those who bought it. Laying claim to something still meant it was yours and couldn’t be taken away.
If there’s a silver lining here, it’s that a serious debate has finally been stoked up about the impermanence of all-digital media, whether we’re trusting corporations a little TOO much, and whether we’re trading convenience for the preservation of our own history. These are things I’ve been shouting about for years.
You might be guessing that now people are going to attempt selling their P.T.-loaded PS4 consoles on eBay. You would be right, even though the circumstances are a little different. P.T. is tied to the account of the one who downloaded it, and the only way to sell the console and keep the game there is to also sell access to that account, and every other game the user bought digitally with it. Some people apparently think it’s worth it though. The one below sold for $1,225, even though it looks like THIS:
Interestingly, this complete withdrawal did not affect European users, who can still download P.T. Their digital laws are different over there, which might have prevented Konami from being allowed to take this step. If this changes though, we’ll let you know.