Sony had nothing to do with it.
Mostly. Sony ran the initial blogpost and also hosted the trailer on its YT page, which is a marketing service
that I assume has a cost for licensed PlayStation developers as a promotional service (or maybe it's fully editorial discretion when stuff is pitched to the PS Community team? Not sure the approvals there.) Nothing unusual about that. And then they never promoted it again or had any involvement in the shenanigans of the now-nonexistent app. They did allow the app to be published though, which is unusual since it's a distribution app for additional content not included in the original product, so that'd a wobbly thing for Sony to allow on its platform (albeit I assume all the content would fall under "DLC" and need to go through approvals and payments anyway?)
https://blog.playstation.com/2021/04/07/abandoned-a-cinematic-survival-sim-hits-ps5-later-this-year/
Claiming platform owners are responsible for vetting the legitimacy of the production capacity of independent developers in the market we have now is unfortunately not the real world anymore. Microsoft can't even keep
ripoffs of its own IP off of its Creator Collection digital shelf. Maybe Sony can learn from this and impose stricter conditions for using its marketing platforms, but I'm not sure how that would work? And Sony coming out in the middle of this, after the n'th promise of delivery of a trailer or further look that never happened, and going, "We are PlayStation, and you should no longer care about this Abandoned game because we think this Hassan guy is a liar," that of course wouldn't happen. I'm not sure there's a censure that exists for Sony to use, besides pulling down content and revoking the license. It just is what it is.
It was actually featured on Playstation official Youtube and blog..
Imagine if game was opened for preorders when trailer came.
Let's say 1 month about 50.000-100.000 preorders, thats about 2-4 million $..
That's the only viable takeaway IMO, that preorder structures need to be more secure and confirmed before offered.
That said, there were no preorders, so I'm not sure what the preorder policy is on PS, but maybe those structures are already there.
I'm still confused anyway why people lost their minds over a flyover of a UE landscape with some vegetation assets thrown in and an amateur VO (and I'm not sure why people are so furious about this "con" when the only thing you're out of pocket on is 1:39 of your life spent watching a Youtube clip,) but it's been a fun ride. I ain't mad at cha, Hideo...
#teamreal