Kojima Productions' playable teaser for Silent Hills, the horror game experience known as P.T., appears to have been pulled completely from the PlayStation Store and is no longer available for re-download, even if you've downloaded the game previously.
Last week, Konami delisted the game from the PlayStation Store after warning PlayStation 4 owners that P.T. would no longer be distributed after April 29. While the game was still available to re-download after deleting it from a hard drive as of April 30, it appears that's no longer the case.
Former Polygon executive editor Russ Frushtick noticed the change earlier today.
Even if you had it in your library, you can't re-download P.T. from PSN on a new PS4. Just tried. So sad.
— Russ Frushtick (@RussFrushtick) May 6, 2015
We tested it out for ourselves and despite having downloaded the game to a PlayStation 4 on April 28 (and re-downloading it shortly after), found that the game was no longer available for download after deleting it from a hard drive today.
The warning message when deleting P.T. still says that it can be downloaded again from the Library section of the PS4.
And after deleting P.T., the game still appears in the PS4's library.
However, attempts to re-download P.T. result in an error.
P.T.'s removal as a download for those who have previously installed the game but deleted the data locally is unusual. Typically, games, demos and downloadable content can be downloaded if the content is deleted from local storage, even if licenses related to that content have expired.
It appears that the inability to re-download P.T. is currently affecting players in the U.S.; PS4 owners in Europe have reported that they're still able to re-download the title in their region.
We've reached out to Konami for details on P.T.'s removal.
P.T. was announced at Gamescom 2014 as "the world's first interactive teaser." The free PS4 title was released shortly after its announcement, and players quickly discovered it was actually a teaser for a new Silent Hill game in development at Kojima Productions. The teaser also revealed that director Guillermo del Toro and The Walking Dead actor Norman Reedus were attached to the project.
Konami delisted P.T. from the PlayStation Store just a few days after the publisher confirmed it had canceled Silent Hills.
"Konami is committed to new Silent Hill titles, however the embryonic Silent Hills project developed with Guillermo del Toro and featuring the likeness of Norman Reedus will not be continued," the company said in a statement.
Update: Sony is now warning PlayStation 4 owners that P.T. cannot be re-downloaded after it's been deleted. The notification appears to be going out to customers who downloaded the demo. Here's the message we received today: