PT gone forever...even if its in your library

So seems that even if you have it in your library list PT is gone forever now. Any attempts to download it just result in a failure notification now even if its in your download list. All those people who thought they would be able to download it at their leisure at a later date are pissed right now.

If that's the way the system is going to work going forward, that's mighty unfortunate.

Good thing I downloaded it to my ps4 before this. NOW I CAN SELL IT FOR 18000 DOLLARS. MUAHAHAHAHAHAH

I mean, I get why it can't be a new download for anybody on the store, because it looks bad that it's advertising an "upcoming" game that is definitely super cancelled.

But going to the effort of having Sony completely pull it from their servers so that people can't even redownload it almost smacks of there being some legal ramification or something if they were to leave it available in any form whatsoever. It seems like an extra amount of effort from Konami "I don't give a fuck about video games" Corporation. Even if the top brass really hate Kojima and are just like "Fuck that guy and everything he worked on", this is a weird extra step to take.

That is some shit right there. Wow. They really want to milk my disappointment about Silent Hills, don't they?

In related news, I have a PT-installed PS4 for sale. $1000. Get your hands on the legendary PT! Rarest PS4 game! The game so scary, The government forced Konami to remove it from PSN for public safety reasons!

People on GAF were contemplating that it most likely has to do with Norman Reedus' likeness being in PT at the end of the game. Apparently whatever contract he had with Konami for that project is up now or so the rumors go that I've been reading. Also, its a free demo so... you can be disappointed but I dunno that anyone has the right to really complain....

If I have a White Destiny PS4 with PT on it......is it technically the rarest? Oh wait there's the PS anniversary PS4 too...goddamnit

@shagge said:

Haha, P.T. can become the Polybius for a modern era.

Well fuck i wanted to show that to a friend and forgot to redownload it. I hope it shows up again somehow.

Cool so now my ps4 is worth more. Kinda like how my 60 gb ps3 fat was worth more after they stopped making backward compatible machines.

Wow, that sucks. Everyone was saying you could always download it because it was in your download history and stuff is always on the Sony servers even when removed. Now I know never to delete it.

Boy that sucks. Guess I'm glad that I downloaded it and didn't take any chances with this.

Bummer. I nabbed it from the PSN store with the intent to download it when I got a PS4.

That sucks...

*sigh* this went from one of the most exciting announcements in video games last year to, so far, the most disappointing clusterfuck this year...

GOOD! Fuck that game. I still get freaked out in dark hallways.

But really though thats pretty lame.

Muahahaha!!!!! :p

Sucks for folks who can't download it anymore though. :(

I did the same glad to know I wasted my time.

What a crock of shit this whole thing turned into.

Figured this would happen somehow or someday. Glad I legit downloaded it.

THIS IS WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN WITH YOUR DIGITAL GAMES!!!

/tinfoilhat

..but really

Which is why I still buy discs 90% of the time. Unless it's a multiplayer focused game.

Eh... doesn't bother me. Physical has its downsides as well. Just depends on what scenario you feel most comfortable with.

The only downsides are having the disc scratched, losing the disc, and having to get up and getting the disc to put it in.

The downside of downloading games is the possibility of never being able to download the game again.

I'll stick with discs.

THIS IS WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN WITH YOUR DIGITAL GAMES!!!

Eventually, sure - with like a year or six months of notice. I don't have a 360 any longer to try it, but some quick Googling shows that people are still able to download games released digitally 10 years ago. People are going to get plenty of notice before they shut those servers down so archivists can cram their harddrives full.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if all the physical copies of Titanfall and Destiny become utterly useless because of the server shutting down before people aren't allowed to download Geometry Wars anymore. At least if you have that on a harddrive it will still play.

On the topic at hand, though, this story just keeps getting crazier and crazier. It makes perfect sense that Norman's likeness would be the culprit, but I can't help but to see Konami just continuing to dig their own grave with each news story that comes out.

Hehe. Well I feel like, realistically, there is no reason why games -- physical or digital -- might just not work in these new systems some day. Whether that is from the companies turning off some kind of main system verification thing or patch servers or whatever. Who knows. I'm not ruling anything out but I see no reason for these companies to give a damn about their systems that are 10+ years old. If they did, they'd have put PS1/PS2/PS3 physical backwards compatibility in the PS4 (which would have been incredible and I would have paid $800 for). Or Xbox One/360/Original. And I'm not confident that people will be able to or care to emulate these modern systems.

Regardless, I just like collecting and having a physical library to oogle at and touchy feely. Consoles in their original boxes and such.

Don't mean to turn this into a physical vs digital debate :P

Man, with Konami burns bridges...they scorch that shit. Hearing how they didn't even send a representative to claim awards on behalf of Kojima Productions was another weird story to read about.

No! You fool! It's a sellers market! WE CAN GO BIGGER.

Seriously though I have a friend who hasn't gone next current gen yet and so did the same add to account thing, so that's a bummer. Though in a way I do find it kind of exciting I have it on my hard drive and so now have an interesting piece of gaming history. But really, Konami, c'mon, if you are going to go down in flames could you still do it at least somewhat loved? Like THQ? Stupid company.
I'm probably the guy who even if it does wind up being a rare item one day will just keep it anyways, I really love horror games.

Sure, eventually once a system is no longer supported on the infrastructure it was available on. The difference here that people seem to ignore is that this was a free download. You can still download games you've purchased after they get pulled off any of the consoles' digital stores because you paid for those licenses - not in perpetuity. No one was entitled to redownload P.T. was it was removed from the Playstation store.

That's fuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked.

But at least it was just a free demo. When someone decides to deny people access to a game they paid for, then I imagine we might see an uproar.

Real glad I downloaded it on a whim a little while back. It's still one of the best games to show to friends for a quick burst of horror.

i was lazy :( but i'm too much of a chickenshit to play it anyway

Thinking back on this it is pretty crazy that this got removed. If I remember correctly didn't this get some high accolades from press during GOTY stuff last year?

I've yet to get a PS4. Guess I won't be able to play this. Not that I've ever been a horror fan anyway so I'll survive.

I'm surprised anyone is surprised..

They said they were taking it down, and it was a free demo in the first place. I'm more surprised anyone gets to keep it at all.

Well they can't exactly remove it from peoples harddrives so I'm not sure what you mean there.

Some disc games have very limited prints as well. And physical media degrades physical discs won't be forever either. Besides that so many games in today's age are so reliant on day one patches and internet connections that even if you have a disc copy its going to be mostly useless.

@believer258 said:

It's still majorly fucked, as it's basically removing a game from existence. Once those HDDs that still have it get fucked or lost or destroyed, PT will no longer exist beyond video footage. It's grim. All that work and love on both sides of the developer-audience equation and it's all meaningless.

If there's any argument for emulation and preservation of video games, it's this crock of shit right here.

And here I was planning to delete and redownload it every week or so just to spite charge download server fees to Konami.

Seriously though, that's a bummer. I'm not surprised, but it's still disappointing to see.

Welcome to the all digital future everyone, where a publisher can take something you own and remove it forever. I probably wouldn't have re-played PT anyway but its just another point as to why i don't trust this method of distribution.

@demoskinos: Came here to pretty much repeat what you said.

@toowalrus: This is unlikely to be the way the system is going and is more to do with this being a free product for something that no longer exists. It's in nobodies interest to keep it available for download, it'd just be costing Konami money at some point.

It sucks that it's gone, but I don't feel too beat up about it.

Well, I'm going to use this to loosely justify my paranoia and purchases of more HDDs. Just got a new 5TB and didn't know how cheap they were.

Without knowing precisely what the danger is, would you say it's time for us to crack each other's heads open and feast on the goo inside?

OK, as someone who thought P.T. was this highly over-rated terribly designed, obtuse mess...

Well, I won't defend my opinion, everyone else here is likely to adore the demo/be a silent hills fan. I will address the bigger issue then, just to give a counter point from a non-fan of the content.

It's just a teaser, for a game that will never exist. The elements it is advertising are at odds with, or are soon to be fully divorced from the company that controls the software..it would only cost them money/bad P.R. to leave up.

Its a thing that people are telling other people you can't have. The internet does not like that. There are people, groups, entire communities that will work to release this game to the public. Because they can, because they are angry at the company, because they genuinely believe P.T. to have merit/be worth leaving for others to experience.

Any talk of "OMG physical media only! Proof digital games are gonna poof!" is silly. A preview of something that no longer even exists is so far removed from a fully developed game someone paid money for. Will, one day, someone somewhere sell a AAA title, and then remove that from markets like P.T. has been, no d/l option and etc? Yes...

And that will be the catalyst for the laws in multiple countries to be changed to laugh at the attempts to make selling video games a 'service" or something that E.A. or the like has some right to revoke from legitimate customers. Just because its in their T.O.S. doesn't mean its got any real chance of surviving a real legal fight, which is something that the removal of an actual game from steam say (preventing re-downloads from people who bought it) would cause.

The loss of P.T. is a thing I am sad to see happen for people who liked/appreciated it. But it feels as much a "We already got hit by you telling us the thing it was teasing is never gonna happen, we are now super angry to have salt rubbed into that wound" as anything.

Just my two cents though, as again, someone who thought the thing had way less value then most.

You've never owned any software, and in this case, it was something that you didn't even spend money on. I understand the fear, but I don't think it's worth getting worked up into a frenzy over this particular situation.

@chaser324: The "you never owned it anyway" isn't a great point. People keep bringing it up whenever anyone mentions digital vs physical, but apart from it being technically true it's a very different thing.

I have a copy of Morrowind on a disc (several copies of it actually). I might not own that software, but the game can never be taken away from me and it can never force an update on me that I don't like or want (see that GTA:SA update that removed songs on PC). The only thing the actual owners of the software could do, would be track me down, find my physical copies and the digital backups sitting on a hard drive and take those away from me. And if they did that, then they'd be taking things I do own, which are the disc the software sits on and the hard drive.

Though I agree, this isn't worth getting worked up over.

sucks. it was free though, right? still sucks- but it seems like a resoundingly 'shit happens' kinda thing.

Hey, check out ebay ya'll. There are already PS4s on sale with the SUPER RARE PT demo installed. So, if you missed out and really want to play it, it will only cost you around a 1000 bucks. CAPITALISM!

Okay , all kidding aside, I have PT on my PS4. and I'm glad I didn't delete it after I played it so I can go back to it if I want to. Still, it is just a demo and Sony probably can't keep it up and available for download for any number of legal reasons that we, as consumers, are not privy to. It is disappointing, though. PT was probably one of the games of 2014 that really left an impression on me. It caused some real strong, visceral reactions, and I don't know if any game will be able to duplicate that initial emotional hit. I hope that someone takes a look at this demo and makes a game that can come close to that level of horror. It was really impressive and it's a shame that other people won't get the opportunity to play it without finding a friend that still has the demo on their PS4, or paying out the wazoo for one on the secondary market.

Hahaha oh man. Guess what.....

@demoskinos: So it's only valid until the end of the year huh? That's pretty messed up, especially if you're one of those suckers who bought an overpriced "PT PS4" on ebay.

@boozak: @demoskinos: Patrick debunked this on Kotaku. That image is from a German player, where PT was tied to PS+. That guys sub runs out in 200 days, so any game he got on PS+ will expire it's license. When the player adds more PS+ time, the license will be renewed.