Sony is continuing its war on shovelware as a number of titles have been suddenly delisted from the PlayStation Store.
Earlier this year Sony removed every single PlayStation game by publisher ThiGames from the storefront, who you may not have heard of before, but it was the fourth-biggest publisher on the platform in terms of games released with 1,194 released before it was purged from the store, including the iconic titles "The Jumping Orange 3," "The Jumping Spaghetti," "The Jumping Wrap," and "The Jumping Wrap TURBO." These were low-effort games released for a low price, and would in turn be bought in droves by players hoping to artificially inflate their Platinum Trophy count as most could be completed very quickly, including The Jumping Pumpkin where you could get the Trophy for jumping 500 times.
As spotted by users on the PSNProfiles forum (via Eurogamer) publishers like GoGame Console Publisher, VRCForge Studios, and Welding Byte have been wiped from the store. Deleted games include Urban Driver Simulator, Water Blast Shooter, Supermarket CEO, and in a hilarious bit of irony from Sony, Easter Sunday also saw the removal of Jesus Simulator.
In the era of AI slop, it's going to be harder and harder for publishers to keep storefronts good, and while on Sony you typically had to go looking deep to find stuff like this already, it's a good move to see it taking action to make the experience better. Nintendo and Steam's stores are a perpetual mess however, so if you yearn for it, there's always those.
