Earlier this week, P.T. was in fact removed from the store. While this has happened before, usually those who have downloaded it in the past — effectively “purchasing” the free demo — are able to download it again, even though it may not appear in the store.
That was not the case for P.T., likely because it is a teaser for a game that is no longer being released. This is unfortunate for gamers, but an enterprising bunch of eBay sellers have begun charging extra for PlayStation 4 consoles that have P.T. installed.
A brief search for “PlayStation 4 PT” on eBay returns more than 40 listings with the absolute lowest starting bid set at $475. Some sellers are attempting to sweeten the offer by noting that other digital games are included along with the demo, and prices for some of these are set as high as $3,500.
It doesn’t seem that eBay is too pleased with this, as the company has begun removing listings advertising that P.T is installed, Kotaku reports. While our search this morning is still returning plenty of listings, some sellers are avoiding the demo outright, instead capitalized the letters P and T whenever they appear and including the demo in screenshots for the listing.
It seems that eBay is using copyright concerns as its reason for removing the listings, saying that “listings for unauthorized copies of items such as movies, music, software, photographs, and books aren’t allowed on eBay.”
This isn’t the first time that we’ve seen demos for sale on eBay. In March, multiple eBay sellers were charging $35 or more for a code for the Final Fantasy XV Episode Duscae demo. The purchase price of a new copy of Final Fantasy Type–0 HD, which included the demo, was only $25 more.
