Ever since Konami decided to take P.T. down from the PlayStation Network, people have been having a harder and harder time getting their hands on it. First, you couldn’t download it from the store, but you still could download it from your library. Then, you couldn’t download it from your library but you could play it if it was still installed, which lead many people to sell their PS4 with P.T. still pre-loaded onto it to others on eBay. Now, even eBay is taking down these offers, making P.T. one of the most sought after demos in gaming history.
eBay accounts that are listing P.T. auctions are receiving the following message when their auctions are taken down.
After reviewing your eBay account, we’ve taken the following action:
-Listings have been removed. A list of items that were removed can be viewed at the bottom of this message.
-We have credited all associated feed except for the final value fee for your listing(s).
Due to copyright concerns, listings for unauthorized copies of items such as movies, music, software, photographs, and books are not allowed on eBay.
You may sell products on recordable media (such as VHS tapes, audio tapes, CD-Rs, and DVD-Rs) if you are the copyright owner or are authorized by the owner to sell the product. This information must be clearly documented in your listing.
For more information go to:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/copyrights.html
If you have more questions, contact our policy experts:
http://ocsnext.ebay.com/ocs/cusr?query=3049&=PTB1210
In order to ensure a safe and smooth transaction for buyers, we review listings for items that contain pre-installed media or software. We require gaming consoles to be restored to factory settings before they are allowed to be sold on eBay. Please remove all games and content from your device before you attempt to list your console again. Please be sure your current and future listings follow these guidelines, keeping in mind that additional listing violations could result in further actions on your account.
That last paragraph is the most important one. eBay requires people to restore their consoles to factory settings in order to sell them again. The same rule was upheld when eBay started taking down auctions for iPhones with copies of Flappy Bird on them when the creator decided to stop selling the addictive one touch game.
But, as Kotaku points out, this rule actually isn’t clearly stated in eBay’s policies. Word for word, copy pasted, the policy reads as such.
Most new video game consoles, that support online gameplay, will save your personal information used for logging into those networks. Before selling your video game console, it is highly recommended to go into the settings area, and reset the console back to factory default settings.
As Kotkau points out, highly recommended is not the same as required.
However, it is illegal to sell a copy of a copyrighted material without the permission of the owner. For example, you can’t, say, tape a TV show and then sell it as a collector’s edition. You could look at P.T. ’s data on a harddrive as the same thing. The only person who has the right to make money off of P.T. is Konami. You could argue that you aren’t actually making money off P.T. and are, instead, just selling off PlayStation 4’s, but if that were the case we wouldn’t see auctions go as high as 1800 dollars for the system.
This is further complicated by the fact that PSN content is tied to your account, not necessarily your console. Many of these eBay offers say that the console comes with 12 months of PlayStation plus, but unless the user is also selling their username (another thing that is illegal) that wouldn’t be the case. The instant you try to import your own account and settings to the console, the fact that the console has P.T. or anything on it won’t really mean much at all.
I think we have to face the music and realize that P.T. is just not going to be a game we can play much longer. Some good Samaritan may, someday, dump the game and then 10 years from now when we figure out how to emulate the PS4, we may be able to play it again. But until then, P.T. will simply be a dream that was never realized.