Sony Blocks Ternox’s Stonks-9800 From PS5, Axes Studio’s Full PS Catalogue

Sony’s months-long cleanup of “shovelware” on the PlayStation Store appears to have swept up a genuine indie developer this time. Ukrainian solo studio Ternox Games says Sony has unilaterally torn up its developer and publisher agreement, blocking the PS5 launch of its stock-trading sim Stonks-9800 and forcing the removal of all 13 of its previously released PlayStation titles.

Ternox Games shared on X that Sony had unilaterally terminated the studio’s developer and publisher agreement, which permits independent studios to list their games on the PlayStation Store, without giving any reason or explanation, leaving the studio unable to launch Stonks-9800 on the platform. The developer added that Sony has ignored all attempts at communication, including multiple emails to the company directly.

Stonks-9800 Pivots to Xbox and Switch Only

Stonks-9800: Stock Market Simulator casts players as an office worker gambling on Japan’s bubble-era stock market through pachinko halls, horse tracks and back-room Yakuza deals. It first launched into Steam Early Access in 2023 and had been building a following ahead of planned console versions. With the PlayStation deal now dead, Ternox Games will focus on self-publishing the title only on Xbox and Nintendo Switch, with plans for physical versions of the game continuing for those platforms while all PlayStation versions are canned.

The fallout doesn’t stop at the new release. Because Ternox Games’ developer and publisher agreement has been terminated, all of the studio’s 13 previously released games will be removed from the PlayStation Store in the coming days. That means players who never picked up the studio’s back catalogue on PS4 or PS5 have only a short window left to do so before those listings vanish for good.

A Purge That Started With Real Junk

Sony’s shovelware crackdown has been running since the start of the year and, until now, appeared to be squarely aimed at bulk-upload publishers rather than working solo developers. In January, Push Square reported that Sony had begun nuking thousands of low-effort games from the PS4 and PS5 storefronts in one of the platform’s largest clean-up efforts to date. Subsequent waves hit publishers such as Nostra Games, whose roughly 90 titles and 700 add-ons disappeared without warning, and CGI Lab, pushing the total closer to 1,000 removed listings by some counts.

By April, the axe fell on GoGame Console Publisher, VRCForge Studios and Welding Byte. Games including Urban Driver Simulator, Water Blast Shooter – Wet Gun, Supermarket CEO Simulator, Racing Car Chaos: Extreme Stunt Showdown, as well as a so-called Jesus Simulator, were all removed, as first reported by Eurogamer and corroborated by TechRadar. Sony has continued targeting prolific bulk publishers through the following months, including a wave that hit Brazilian outfit Afil Games’ roughly 140-game catalogue in June.

Where Ternox Games Doesn’t Fit the Shovelware Mould

What sets the Ternox case apart is that Stonks-9800 doesn’t resemble the disposable, AI-assisted trophy-farm titles Sony has targeted elsewhere in this campaign: games built around cloned assets, misleading names designed to piggyback on search traffic, or five-minute Platinum trophies. It’s a single-developer passion project with years of Early Access support behind it on Steam and a dedicated community. Unlike the publishers caught in earlier sweeps, Ternox says it received no explanation at all, only silence in response to repeated emails.

Developers watching the purge unfold keep coming back to that silence. Sony still hasn’t published clear public criteria for what triggers a delisting or a contract termination. Small studios acting in good faith have no real way of knowing whether their next update, or their next game, could get swept into the same net as an actual asset-flip mill.

What It Means for Digital Storefront Trust

The episode also revives an older debate about what buying a game digitally actually guarantees. On PlayStation, as on most console storefronts, a purchase grants a revocable licence rather than outright ownership, and that licence disappears the moment Sony pulls a title from sale, regardless of how much a player paid for it. For Kiwi and Australian PlayStation owners, who rely on the PS Store as effectively the only sanctioned marketplace on the console, cases like this are a reminder that regional pricing, local server access and game availability all sit at the discretion of a single platform holder with no storefront competitor on its own hardware.

For now, Stonks-9800 fans on PlayStation are left without a console release, while Ternox Games regroups around Xbox and Switch. Whether Sony ultimately reverses the termination, or offers Ternox any explanation at all, remains to be seen, but the case has already become a rallying point for developers arguing that a policy built to clear out digital junk needs sharper edges before more legitimate studios end up in its path.