It’s not good news, but keep reading – It’s not exactly bad news, either.
For those that don’t know about the Fan-Made remake, it was ambitious and interesting. Led by modder SmoggyChips, the remake was being developed in Unreal Engine 4 and was available for free public download. It was a long way from completion, but was an interesting attempt to bring back a unique horror experience that many were disappointed never came to pass. You can check out an alpha trailer here.
But bad news has struck. Konami got in touch with the mod team and had them shut down the project. During team blogs, the modders admit that they sort of suspected this kind of thing might end up happening. But apparently, it’s not all bad news.
According to the Blog on Gamejolt, one of the more involved modders – Quismar – was offered an internship by Konami, who were impressed by the amount of work and dedication that went into the crafting and creation of this free mod program.
But the news gets better – WAY better. According to Quismar, a Konami employee contacted him over the phone about the takedown, and politely told him that it was really popular in the Konami office, and that he didn’t want to make the modders take it down, but due to legal issues out of all of their control, he had no other option.
Then there was this:
“He told me that my remake was popular around the office and that because of my remake, Konami had a strong resurgence of a desire to make legitimate games again (as opposed to Pachinko machines, mobile games, sports games, (which, I guess they’re all ‘legitimate games’ but you get what I’m saying) etc.).”
He then goes on to apologize about the remake’s takedown. “I can surely understand that you all are disappointed,” he explains. “Not gonna lie, I’m a little disappointed, too (though I’m not mad. I would understand if you all are mad, tho). Especially by the timing.”
According to him, he’d just finished the animations, which would have meant that the visual parts of the game remake were almost 100% complete apart from some bits of lighting, a few textures, and some stuff with cockroaches.
He does restate again, however, that any who were looking forward to the game should not place their blame upon Konami. The man he communicated with over the phone was very clear and concise in his communications, and, according to the modder, seemed to sincerely appreciate the work the modder had done in the game.
We should note that while the official download of the remake has been taken down, there is a strong chance that there is still third-party downloads that still have the remake listed. So if you’re reading this late, there’s still a small chance that you might be able to get a mostly-complete version of P.T. for your PC, if you move quickly enough and know where to look.
Although we are disappointed about the take-down, we are excited to see what Konami’s promised interest to “make real games again” brings in the future. Maybe we’ll even see another outing from everyone’s favorite Rigid Serpent.
Hey, you never know.
