The battle against shovelware, spam games, and AI slop seems never ending, with new “developers” and “publishers” popping up left and right, even after the major hardware manufacturers (Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft) have all taken significant steps to try to limit the influx of low-effort games, including outright delistings.
For now, Sony appears to be the most aggressive in its attempt to clean up its PlayStation Store ecosystem, as after a recent sweep targeting a major publisher, another significant sweep appears to have taken down several like it.
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As first spotted by Delisted Games, a site dedicated to covering titles picked up from digital storefronts, titles from GOGAME Console Publisher, VRCFORGE Studios, and Welding Byte (formerly operating as RandomSpin Games) have all been removed from PSN.
Among the titles that came from these so-called publishers are the likes of Jesus Simulator and Card Shop Game Store, a rip-off of the one-time Steam exclusive simulator TCG Card Shop.
A cursory search for any of these titles actually leads to an error page on the PlayStation Store website, indicating that the titles have indeed been removed.
As for GOGAME and VRCFORGE, the two “studios” had yet to release, according to the PSN Profiles forum, which were seemingly set to debut before being shut down. Searching for these titles leads to the same error page.
Even with moves from PlayStation, these “Studios” still have Nintendo and Microsoft
As good as it is to see at least one storefront removed from these titles, the reality is that the developers have two more storefronts in the Nintendo eShop and the Microsoft Xbox Store, plus a third in Steam, where they can continue to release them.
As for Nostra Games, a Cyprus-based studio responsible for nearly 700 titles that were part of a recent delisting wave, they issued a statement outlining plans to do exactly that.
“Unfortunately, the PS Store has removed our games, and we cannot provide an exact reason as it was not shared with us either,” the statement from Nostra Games read in part. “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 had planned to continue releasing games for the next few years, and you've already seen some of them, but unfortunately, this is how things turned out.”
As we said above, it's really just a game of mole, and until some stricter guidelines are put in place, taking down a 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 it went.
- Stamp
-
Sony
- Original release date
-
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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Orbis Olympics
- Processor
-
Custom 8-core AMD Zen 2
- Resolution
-
720p – 8K
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Video game consoles have never been less affordable than they are today.
