The fight against shovelware, spam games, and AI scumbags is seemingly never ending, and new “developers” and “publishers” are popping up left and right, even after major hardware manufacturers (Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft) have taken significant steps to try to stem the tide of low-demand games, including outright removals.
At the moment, Sony seems to be the most aggressive in its quest to clean up the PlayStation Store ecosystem, as after a recent crackdown targeting a major publisher, another major crackdown appears to have pushed out several others like it.
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As first spotted by Delisted Games, a website dedicated to titles downloaded from digital stores, titles from console publisher GOGAME, VRCFORGE Studios and Welding Byte (formerly RandomSpin Games) have all reportedly been removed from PSN.
Among the titles that come from these so-called publishers are Jesus Simulator and Card Shop Game Store, a rip-off of the once Steam-exclusive TCG Card Shop Simulator.
Indeed, a cursory search for any of these titles leads to an error page on the PlayStation Store website, indicating that the titles have indeed been removed.
As for GOGAME and VRCFORGE, these two “studios” have yet to release titles that were seemingly set to debut before their closure, according to the PSN Profiles forums. Searching for these titles leads to the same error page.
Even with Moves by PlayStation, these “studios” still have Nintendo and Microsoft
As great as it is to see at least one store removed from these titles, the reality is that the developers have two more stores in the Nintendo eShop and the Microsoft Xbox Store, plus a third in Steam where they can continue to release them.
In the case of Nostra Games, the Cypriot studio responsible for nearly 700 titles that was part of the recent wave of delistings, they released a statement outlining plans to do exactly that.
“Unfortunately, the PS Store has removed our games and we are unable to provide an exact reason as this has not been shared with us either,” reads part of Nostra Games' statement. “For now, we plan to continue releasing on Nintendo Switch, Xbox and Steam. This was as unexpected for us as it was for you, as we planned to continue releasing games for the next few years and you've already seen some of them, but unfortunately it turned out this way.”
As we said above, it's really just a game of squibs, and until some stricter rules are put in place, taking down one studio or a handful is really just the tip of the iceberg.
For example, even though the Card Shop Game Store no longer exists, there is another title waiting to be released in the form of TCG Card Shop Simulator Manager, another AI rip-off of the real thing. That's how things developed.
- Mark
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Sony
- Original release date
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November 12, 2020
- Original MSRP (USD)
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$499, €499, £449, ¥49,980 (base) // $399, €399, £359, ¥39,980 (digital),
- Operating system
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OS Orbis
- Processor
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Custom 8-core AMD Zen 2
- Resolution
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720p – 8K
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Video game consoles have never been less affordable than they are today.
