So P.T. , the playable teaser for the game that will never be, Silent Hills , has now been removed from the PSN forever. You cannot download it fresh, nor can you download it from your library. Essentially, the only existing copies of that data exist within Konami’s archives, and on whatever PS4s whose owners were intelligent enough not to delete it during the big Konami and Hideo Kojima fallout.
We all know why the game was deleted. Konami obviously didn’t want any evidence of their failed project to be public. Not to mention, the project showed names like Guillermo Del Toro, Norman Reedus, and, of course, Hideo Kojima, that Konami is no longer affiliated with. Not to mention, there could be confusion if some relatively new gamer downloaded the teaser, and then wondered where the full game was, which is a situation Konami probably doesn’t want people looking into, considering it portrays the company in a fairly negative light.
Of course, removing of P.T. also portrays Konami in somewhat of a negative light, so one has to wonder whether or not removing the game was actually that great of an idea in the first place. Many fans have suggested that they simply alter the game with a splash screen at the end, telling everyone that the project has been discontinued but to look forward to great new projects from the Silent Hill team. That would turn an otherwise failed project into a marketing asset. Of course, altering the teaser at all would cost money, money Konami probably doesn’t have, considering they will never make a return on the money it spent to develop P.T. in the first place.
From a less pragmatic standpoint, we could argue that fans have a right to be able to play P.T. no matter what Konami wants. The teaser was developed and made available to the public for everyone to experience free of charge. Even though the project it’s advertising for is now dead, that doesn’t meant that P.T. should be wiped from the face of existence. Sure, if Konami’s brass really wanted to make it so that people could not download a new copy of P.T. , that’s technically their choice because they are the distributor. But anyone who already “purchased” a copy should be able to enjoy it from here to the end of time, and removing it from game libraries is a worrisome step that counteracts the very notion of ownership. What if a company did this to a game you paid good money for?
What do you think? Is it the right thing for Konami to take P.T. off their servers? Do fans deserve to retain P.T. as long as they purchased it? Do we have any right to games we obtain digitally, or are we fated to only buy physical games if we really want to hold on to them forever?
Let us know what you think in the comments.