Sony has carried out another PlayStation Store cleanup, removing the catalogs of GoGame Console Publisher, VRCForge Studios, and Welding Byte from its digital storefront.
The latest removals weren’t announced by the company itself and were instead discovered by the users. Some of the games deleted were Jesus Simulator and I Am Busy Digging a Hole.
This is the third purge conducted by Sony this year alone. In January, Sony removed the full catalog of ThiGames, a publisher that had at least 1,196 PlayStation Store listings and had become one of the platform’s most prolific publishers by sheer volume. Many of those releases were inexpensive, near-identical trophy-focused games in the “The Jumping” series, such as The Jumping Taco, The Jumping Pizza, and The Jumping Burrito.
Sony made another large cleanup in late March, removing titles from Nostra Games and CGI Lab, totaling almost 700 entries. Nostra said at the time that the removals were unexpected and that it had not been given a specific reason.
The newest purge targeted several publishers at once again, mainly the “games” from GoGame Console Publisher, VRCForge Studios, and Welding Byte.
The main point of this cleanup is to stop the PlayStation Store from being filled with extremely cheap and low-effort “achievement-bait” games, mainly existing to pad the players’ Platinum trophy count.
Sony hasn’t made a public statement about any of the cleanups, nor has the company ever outlined proper guidelines for ensuring the games are safe after being featured on the PS Store.
Players who asked for better discoverability of the titles should rejoice, as this year’s three purges made the storefronts much easier to use, as there are no longer rows upon rows of completely useless throwaway games for very cheap price.
Curiously, Sony decided to use sweeping cleanups, removing entire catalogs from some publishers, rather than removing only the isolated titles that break one or several rules.
