The indie developer of a stock market game which has been well received on Steam says their library of previous PlayStation releases is being delisted by Sony.
Ukrainian developer Ternox Games released STONKS-9800 – a stock market game with an ’80s anime aesthetic – in Steam Early Access in 2023.
The game reached 100,000 sales this March, and currently has an ‘overwhelmingly positive’ rating on Steam, with 97% of its user reviews marked as positive.
Ternox has been planning a console release for STONKS-9800, but took to social media on Sunday to announce that not only had Sony blocked its release on PS5, it was also planning to remove all of Ternox’s previous PlayStation releases.
“STONKS-9800 will not be coming to PS5,” the developer wrote on X. “Sony 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.”
Claiming that PlayStation support “refuses to listen to my arguments or even respond to my emails in any way”, Ternox said they still planned to release the game on Switch and Xbox.
“I had hoped to release the PS5 version in 2027 and make a physical disc edition while that was still possible,” they wrote. “Sadly, that will not happen – but I’ll do my best to create a physical edition for PC and Switch.”
In the past five years, the studio has released 13 games on PlayStation consoles (some of which were made by other indie developers and published by Ternox), all of which are set to be removed from the PlayStation Store according to the developer. These titles are:
- Nexoria: Dungeon Rogue Heroes
- Finger Fitness
- Retro Highway
- Unichrome: A 1-Bit Unicorn Adventure
- O-VOID: Console Edition
- Run & Jump Guy
- Scrap Divers
- Fox’s Zen House
- Boned Again: Survivors
- Dungeonloop
- IN-VERT
- Taimumari: Complete Edition
- Bullet Beat
“I’m really sorry that this happened and that I failed the developers whose games I published. But there’s nothing I can do about it now, unfortunately,” they added.
“I still have a tiny bit of hope that this decision will be reconsidered, so please share this message if you can.”
The developer claims they don’t know why their developer and publisher agreement with Sony has been terminated. Some have suggested it may be part of Sony’s recent attempts to clear shovelware from the PlayStation Store, and that even though Ternox’s games don’t meet that definition they may have been caught up in the clean-up.
The developer also posted a joke post last month about games not having physical media – the day after Sony announced that physical disc games will be discontinued for PlayStation consoles from January 2028 – but there’s nothing to indicate the agreement was cancelled as a result of this.
