Konami Shuts P.T. Fan Remake Down, Offers 17-Year-Old Maker Internship

Inspired by the original demo on their PS4 hard drive, one 17-year-old developer opted to bring P.T. back from the dead. After a month of datamining the demo, studying speed runs and watching walkthroughs of the game, one user rebuilt the cancelled Silent Hills trailer entirely in Unreal Engine 4.

Naturally, Konami came calling — but with a surprise twist.

Developer Qimsar uploaded their spin on P.T. to Gamejolt earlier this month. There were plenty of placeholder assets and missing bits and bobs – Qimsar told Silent Hill fans that he’d only had about 6 hours experience with Unreal Engine, and another 35 on Gamemaker.

But still, people lapped up the teenager’s efforts – and with good reason:

Naturally, things were a little close to the Konami IP bone. Having been open about reusing the 3D models and sounds from the original game, as well as the demo’s entire likeness, it wasn’t surprising that Qimsar got a call early in the morning from a Konami employee one morning.

“I was told that he and many other people at Konami saw and really liked my remake, but legit due to legal issues that were out of his or anybody else’s control really, he had to ask me to take down my remake project,” the developer wrote.

The conversation took an interesting turn from there, though. Having agreed to take the fan remake down, the Konami employee went on to say that it was popular around the Konami offices. The 17-year-old – for whom P.T. was his first game project – was also supposedly offered an internship:

It hasn’t been made super official or anything, but a freakin’ internship for me with Konami in which I would do stuff with Konami US, EU, and Japan. Internships tend to turn into jobs fairly often and for a 17-year old who isn’t even a senior in high school just yet, to get this for the very first game project that he’s ever worked on with 6 hours of prior UE4 experience (and a fair amount of Unity experience (35 hours give or take) but that’s irrelevant :P), that’s pretty good.

The timing is a bit unfortunate, as the fan remake only needed some final touches before it was actually completely done. A lot of users were angry at Konami for effectively issuing the cease and desist, but Qismar was grateful for the potential opportunity. “I’m personally surprised that Konami acted this way, I was really scared that they would just hit me up with a C&D and that would be it but nah, they politely called me to take it down and they’re giving me a freaking internship,” they wrote.


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