{"id":423583,"date":"2026-01-19T16:50:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T16:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/423583\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T16:50:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T16:50:06","slug":"sonys-playstation-store-removes-150-shovelware-titles-by-a-single-developer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/423583\/","title":{"rendered":"Sony’s PlayStation Store Removes ~150 Shovelware Titles by a Single Developer"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a bad day for both PlayStation Network trophy hunters and fans of inanimate objects with an inexplicable penchant for jumping. Sony appears to have removed<\/a> the entire catalog of games published by ThiGames<\/a>, a German company whose output was known primarily for its popularity with gamers looking to flaunt their 100% completion of as many titles as possible.<\/p>\n

Nuking ThiGames\u2019 catalog meant removing a lot of games. The sudden disappearance of the company from Sony\u2019s online store was first noted by Twitch streamer Rob Thanatos, who accompanied his report with a screenshot<\/a>, apparently from the site TrueTrophies.com<\/a>, that suggested the publisher had a scarcely believable 1194 PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 for sale. The next day, the site Delisted Games\u2014which catalogs games that are, for whatever reason, no longer available to purchase\u2014goes into more detail about this number<\/a>, noting that it counts various translations and regional variations as individual titles; when this multiple counting is removed, the number shrinks to a more sensible 150 or so.<\/p>\n

In any case, the games in ThiGames\u2019 catalog seem to have shared one thing in common: they\u2019re what\u2019s referred to as \u201cshovelware,\u201d the metaphor being that they are shoveled out the studio\u2019s door with no regard for quality. (And in 2026, the advent of vibe coding and AI-generated assets no doubt makes wielding the shovel easier than ever.)<\/p>\n

While games like The Jumping Bonbon, The Jumping Strawberry, and The Jumping Onion Ring have a certain outsider-y charm to them, any popularity they enjoyed with PSN subscribers appears to have been largely because they make it easy<\/a> to earn Platinum Trophies, which are awarded for obtaining all of a game\u2019s individual trophies. (For those without a PlayStation, trophies are similar to achievements on other platforms\u2014you obtain them for completing certain objectives within a given game.)<\/p>\n

The obvious conclusion here is that Sony decided that it didn\u2019t want its store filled with\u2026 well, let\u2019s say \u201cgames of low quality.\u201d Some commentators are describing the removal of these games as a long-overdue exercise in house cleaning and celebrating the fact that their visits to the PlayStation store will involve less time slogging through titles about jumping thingamajigs in search of real games to play.<\/p>\n

But ThiGames aren\u2019t the only company to cash in on gamers\u2019 thirst for trophies; there are many others whose entire output is predicated on the desire for bragging rights. In addition, several users on Twitter have pointed out that it\u2019s not clear whether Sony would have the right to just unilaterally ban a publisher\u2019s entire catalog based on a decision that those games kinda sucked. This has led to speculation<\/a> that the publisher must have done something more egregious than just flooding the PlayStation store with unabashed slop.<\/p>\n

Neither party immediately responded to a request for comment. We\u2019ll update this post when we receive a reply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a bad day for both PlayStation Network trophy hunters and fans of inanimate objects with an inexplicable…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,63,9478,222704,9482,105,222705],"class_list":{"0":"post-423583","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-playstation","11":"tag-shovelware","12":"tag-sony","13":"tag-technology","14":"tag-thigames"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}