Still a product of legend, Konami’s PlayStation exclusive game demo “P.T.” was released eight years ago and shortly after, pulled from Sony’s servers.
Now the person who claims to have removed the 2014 title, which was quickly revealed to be a critically-acclaimed playable teaser for Hideo Kojima’s cancelled “Silent Hills” game, has spoken about it for the first time.
Following Kojima’s departure from the company the following year, the game was cancelled, and “P.T.” was controversially pulled from the PlayStation Store along with the ability to re-download it. Years later, it was made unplayable on PS5.
Kojima acknowledged the eight-year anniversary on Friday on social media, and shortly after a former staffer named ‘Pearl L’ revealed on Twitter she had both been responsible for setting up the surprise release of the game and having to put in the call to have it removed:
“Fun fact: since I was the 1P lead at the time at Konami, I helped get this product set up on the storefronts, fake publisher and everything. And I was the one who had to call Sony and ask them to take it down and block redownloads. That was a super fun conversation.”
Pearl answered fan questions after that but couldn’t give a clear answer for exactly why it was pulled, saying only: “I say this with love, ‘because Konami'”.
She also says it was a tough situation for those working within Konami and the customer support staff at both the developer and Sony, who had to bear the brunt of abuse from irate customers. She adds:
“Sony (as always) was fantastic to work with. It was a tough situation all around. It was a RIDE! Honestly, [it was] not a great situation all around – I really felt for Sony, who had to bear the brunt of dealing with the situation: It was defo an interesting lesson in power and the importance of picking your battles in relationship management.”
She confirms “P.T.” was the first time Sony had ever been asked to delist and block redownloads of a video game on its digital store:
“We’d already gone thru a lot to get it set up, got a lot of operational exceptions. And then to add the request to block redownload? More engineering workarounds. It was exciting to see ppl hype about it and see the work pay off! But in a way also not.”
Finally, she revealed she still values the experience, saying: “it was amazing to see everyone come together to try to figure out the experience and seem them come away with so much love for it.” The only way to play the game these days remains a working PS4 that managed to download a copy of the title eight years ago.
