Image: Push Square
Update [Fri 21st Aug 2026, 11:30am]:
Sony has seemingly admitted it made a mistake by cancelling its publishing arrangement with indie dev Ternox as part of its ongoing shovelware purge.
While the platform holder has made painstaking efforts to rid the PS Store of rubbish, the Ukrainian studio appeared to unfairly get caught in the crossfire.
Looking at its software lineup, there was nothing particularly egregious that should have resulted in its titles getting removed. Its upcoming game Stonks-9800: Stock Market Simulator has received rave reviews in early access on Steam.
Playstation has restored my access to the developer account and allowed me to continue working!
My games will remain available for purchase, and I’ll keep releasing games for PlayStation as well!
Thank you all for your support! https://t.co/9xQwAX0MxT
— Ternox Games 🇺🇦 【STONKS-9800】OUT NOW! (@Taimumari) August 20, 2026
That title will now once again target the PS5 when finished as Ternox’s publishing arrangement with PlayStation has now been reinstated.
It seems like there’s no bad blood from the indie, and it just wants to crack on with releasing its games to as many people as possible.
Sony must do much better, though.
While I appreciate errors can happen, and I do think it’s good that it’s committed to cleaning up the PS Store, it’s obvious this dev was unfairly targeted – and it took articles like this one to raise attention to the issue.
Original Story: Sony has been ridding the PS Store of shovelware, erasing entire publisher catalogues from its virtual plaza.
While I think this news has been broadly well received, I’ve always cautioned that legit devs may one day get caught up in the crossfire.
And it looks like that’s happened to Ukrainian outfit Ternox, who’s been told its upcoming text-based adventure Stonks-9800: Stock Market Simulator can’t release on PS5.
The game, available in Early Access on Steam already, has attracted ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ reviews since debuting in 2023. That’s based on over 1,000 ratings, too.
The studio has also been told that its entire output will be purged from the PS Store in the coming days.
STONKS-9800 will not be coming to PS5.
Sony @PlayStation unilaterally terminated my PlayStation developer and publisher agreement without giving me any reason.
My existing games are scheduled to be removed from the PlayStation Store after August 23. pic.twitter.com/NQRnAmdyRb
— Ternox Games 🇺🇦 【STONKS-9800】OUT NOW! (@Taimumari) August 16, 2026
While its games do appear to have fairly easily unlockable Trophies, there are only nine of them and they don’t look unanimously terrible to me.
Nexoria: Dungeon Rogue Heroes looks like a basic pixel art dungeon crawler, while Retro Highway is a pretty straightforward Super Hang-On clone.
Other titles include side-scrolling shooter Unichrome: A 1-Bit Unicorn Adventure and Fox’s Zen House, an idle clicker that uses the touchpad.
Many of these games have a score of over 4.00 on the PS Store, and none of them look egregiously awful like The Jumping Pizza and other obvious copy-and-paste shovelware.
The dev says it incorporated many of the unique features of the DualSense into its games, including haptic feedback.
So, let’s start a 🧵thread about PlayStation games that Sony considers awful and will remove in just a week.
Nexoria: Dungeon Rogue Heroes
My little silly dungeon crawler.
In the PS5 version, I implemented advanced vibration with sfx.https://t.co/JAx6lnb4NM https://t.co/9xQwAX0MxT pic.twitter.com/q4Pb7bvfE7
— Ternox Games 🇺🇦 【STONKS-9800】OUT NOW! (@Taimumari) August 16, 2026
Looking through its lineup, the only game I think may have fallen short of Sony’s new guidelines is Finger Fitness, which you may recall was an easy Platinum Trophy game designed around the adaptive triggers.
Obviously, I can see the platform holder’s point of view here, but I’d still consider this game a little more imaginative than some of the other shovelware on Sony’s system. This one sits comfortably next to the My Name Is Mayo series in my opinion.
Still, if the platform holder has a problem with this game, couldn’t it just remove it on its own?
Ternox says it hasn’t received a reason for its publishing account’s termination from Sony. I’ll try to contact the company and see if it’ll tell me more.
For what it’s worth, Ternox says it’s still committed to bringing the well-regarded Stonks-9800 to Switch and Xbox.
As the Editor of Push Square, Sammy has over 15 years of experience analysing the world of PlayStation, from PS3 through PS5 and everything in between. He’s an expert on PS Studios and industry matters, as well as sports games and simulators. He also enjoys RPGs when he has the time to dedicate to them, and is a bit of a gacha whale.