PlayStation terminates 'Ternox Games' by planning to remove all their titles form PlayStation Store
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PlayStation terminates 'Ternox Games' by planning to remove all their titles form PlayStation Store
"Ternox Games", a Ukrainian indie game developer, would discover that PlayStation had planned to delist all of their titles from the PlayStation Store, removing 13 whole titles from the PlayStation Store and revoking their access to publish games on their platform.
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Indie Games vs AAA Studios
In the video gaming market, one of the many challenges indie developers must face head-on is the competition with other titles and large companies with huge funding behind them. Over the years, players have started to slowly become more interested in indie titles due to the disappointment players have felt with releases from AAA, such as "Call of Duty: Black Ops 7", "Battlefield 6", and "Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League". As a result, this has caused several indie games to skyrocket in popularity and cause decent competition with these large studios. A handful of these indie game success stories include: "Lethal Company", "Balantro", "PEAK", "Palworld", and "Among Us" are just a handful of video games that exceed the majority of popular IPs from huge corporations. One of the worst fears for indie developers is that their titles, which they've spent multiple weeks fine-tuning to release, randomly get flagged and scheduled to be removed from their stores; this is what happened to Ternox Games.
Ternox Games affected by Sony's decision on Publisher
Ternox Games, an indie game developer from Ukraine, had been creating titles since 2019 on Steam, with some of their titles releasing on consoles for PS4/PS5, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch. The next big project they were planning to release on PS5 was a game called "STONKS-9800", a stock market simulator game with an 80s Japanese aesthetic, where players would increase their profits through a text-based adventure. The Early Access version of the game has received "Very Positive" to "Overwhelmingly Positive" reviews for the project, but porting this game specifically to PlayStation would be more trouble than originally expected. On August 16, the official Ternox Games X (formerly known as Twitter) account made a devastating announcement regarding their status as a PlayStation developer, stating the following message:
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.
Ternox Games official account posting their status with PlayStation
In a follow-up reply, they claim that PlayStation Support was unable to respond to their emails, resulting in a forced removal of their titles and be revoked from releasing their titles on the platform. Meanwhile, on Xbox and Nintendo Switch, their titles remain operational with plans to add more of the PC centered games to those platforms. They would proceed to list all of the games that would be removed from the PlayStation Store, encouraging anyone interested in buying them while they still can, which were as follows:
Boned Again: Survivors
Bullet Beat
Dungeonloop
Finger Fitness
Fox's Zen House
IN-VERT
Nexoria: Dungeon Rogue Heroes
O-VOID: Console Edition
Retro Highway
Run & Jump Guy
Scrap Divers
Taimumari: Complete Edition
Unichrome: A 1-Bit Unicorn Adventure
With all of these games scheduled to be delisted, they would post this information on X to their players and to hopefully make their voice heard to PlayStation Support. Four days later, Ternox Games would make an announcement on August 20, with news regarding their status with PlayStation. In their post, they are happy to announce that PlayStation has restored their access as a Developer and can continue working on new titles to be added to the PlayStation Store. A day later, they would clarify that two games would have to be permanently removed from the store per PlayStation's requirements: "O-VOID: Console Edition " and"Finger Fitness". Although they were upset about removing these titles from the store, they accepted the conditions if it meant they could keep developing games, with eventual plans to make physical releases for their titles on PlayStation.
Why did this happen?
One of the reasons behind the sudden removal of the developer's game could be due to the massive push PlayStation has made to remove shovelware and "AI-Slop" from the marketplace. Whilst they were removing titles that fit under their criteria, Ternox Games was caught in the crossfire with numerous of their games, despite not falling under the same shovelware definition as games like "My Name is Mayo" and "The Jumping" series (games consisting of the title, "The Jumping" with a random item, animal, or food the player presses a single button for, earning the completion of said game in meer minutes). The two titles that were removed from the store, "O-VOID: Console Edition" and "Finger Fitness", had very quick times to earn 100% trophies/acheivements and would be considered Shovelware, due to their completion time.
What does this mean moving forward?
With the original problem with Ternox Games, it raises a new concern and new questions: 'Is PlayStation able to determine shovelware from actual games, and how high is the risk of real developers being hit with termination from their platform?' While PlayStation has been sifting through the store and removing shovelware titles from their store, there are still numerous titles that are blatantly shovelware that still exist and are listed as of writing. In the case of Ternox Games, they had all of their titles scheduled to be removed and had their developer status revoked, with little communication from PlayStation Support, practically cementing their complete removal. In the event PlayStation does accidentally flag a game that isn't shovelware, developers may not be able to communicate the error to PlayStation Support. If developers like Ternox Games had not taken to social media to discuss their status with PlayStation, it's unknown if their support team would have responded to their emails regarding the termination. With PlayStation moving towards an all-digital store by 2028, this does make future indie games have more trouble standing out naturally on their store, compared to other platforms like Steam. Since the Steam guidelines have a different set of rules, indie games have more potential to stand out among other games. On PlayStation, their guidelines are more restrictive, and this could cause future problems for developers looking to publish their games on their platform. While it is great news for Ternox Games to have their developer status reactivated, it causes concern for how PlayStation will treat developers on their platform in the future, especially with an all-digital future awaiting players.
Why It Matters
This update matters to trophy hunters because new releases, platform changes, subscription drops, and community trends can affect what players choose to play, complete, and discuss next.