It’s hailed as one of the scariest horror games ever made. It’s become an object of fascination for hackers pulling apart its secrets. And it’s still spoken fondly of 10 years after it debuted. Not bad for a game that was never really released.
On August 12, 2014, P.T. appeared as a free demo on consoles. Lasting just a couple of hours and set entirely in a series of long hallways, P.T. immediately captivated players with its disturbing premise and chilling horror. As you explore its haunted halls in first-person, a radio broadcast discusses a grisly crime in detail while ghostly voices wail and whisper from seemingly all around you. You explore the same spaces over and over, though they change inexplicably each time as it starts to seem like someone unseen is nearby. The coup de grâce comes from a terrifying ghost who finally appears at the end of the hall, followed by the shocking realization that she’s been following you the whole time.
If that’s all there was to P.T., it might not have attained the cult-like following it has now, but it would still very likely stick in players’ heads thanks to its deeply unnerving brand of horror. But what elevates P.T. to the cultural status it has today is that its full promise never came to fruition.
For those brave enough to make it to the end of P.T., a final puzzle reveals that there’s more to this demo than meets the eye. A notoriously difficult last challenge calls for some incredibly specific solutions from players, seeming almost designed to be worked out with friends online rather than discovered individually. Those who passed this final test were treated to a reveal as shocking as anything in the game itself — P.T. isn’t just any demo, it’s a “playable teaser” for Silent Hills, a collaboration between Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro, starring Norman Reedus.
Sticking that incredible announcement to the end of an already-great horror demo cemented P.T.’s place in video game history immediately. But what happened next made it a legend. By now, Kojima’s break with Konami is ancient history, but it was a stunning turn at the time. The famed developer left his former employer to found Kojima Productions, taking a good chunk of his colleagues with him and putting an end to development of Silent Hills at the same time.
If that wasn’t disappointing enough, the cancellation of Silent Hills also led to P.T. disappearing from storefronts. It was, after all, essentially an advertisement for a game that would never come out, so Konami had no more use for it. While P.T. was no longer available for download, it still remained on the consoles of players who’d managed to grab it during the short time it was available. PlayStation 4 consoles with P.T. installed quickly began showing up on eBay for upwards of $1,000. At least one console reportedly sold for $1,800, making its installed P.T. demo alone worth well over a grand.
The exclusive status of P.T. also made it sought after by seasoned hackers eager to dig into its code for secrets. That includes well-known Dark Souls hacker Lance McDonald, who made the chilling discovery in 2019 that P.T.’s most terrifying presence, a ghost called Lisa, is actually tethered to the player character for the entire game, silently stalking them in order to pull off a particularly devious jump scare when they look into the bathroom mirror. It’s the kind of trickery that plenty of video games pull off to make their worlds feel more alive, but given P.T.’s haunting themes, there’s something uncomfortably spooky about this digital ghost following one step behind players the whole time.
On its own merits, P.T. is already an obsession-worthy horror game that turns a simple hallway into one of the most anxiety-inducing environments in gaming. But since its launch, it also ended up embroiled in a legendary developer’s departure from his long-time studio and an ongoing crisis of preservation that sees even beloved games made completely unavailable by publishers unwilling to maintain them. Combined with some genuine programming magic behind its biggest scares, it’s no surprise the P.T. demo has lingered in public consciousness a decade after it ceased to be playable.
