Sony has just purged the PlayStation store of thousands of games, yet they all came from one specific developer who has emerged as the platform's most prolific for all the wrong reasons.
Publishing games has changed dramatically in the last decade or so thanks to the move towards primarily digital storefronts, and that's opened up countless opportunities for indie developers and even solo devs to share their games with the world.
Consequently there are more games released each year than ever before, and by quite a significant margin too, yet the vast majority of those releases go completely unknown to even the most well versed gamer.
Part of this is simply because it's difficult to earn people's attention these days, but for some games it's simply because they're not worth discussing — or frankly even playing in the first place.
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These tend to be branded 'shovelware' by gamers, as the term refers to titles that are created in large quantities with little effort, often with pre-made (and now AI-generated) assets that are purely created to make money quick.
While you might think that platforms like PlayStation and Xbox would be attentive about what games they offer up to console owners, these respective storefronts are unfortunately plagued with thousands of shovelware-esque titles each year — yet that might be about to change.
As reported by Push Square, Sony has recently made a bold yet unexpected move against these games by removing thousands of titles published by one specific company, effectively deleting its entire output from the PS4 and PS5 storefronts.
The developer in question is ThiGames, and we certainly don't blame you if this is the first time you're hearing about them. Most of their titles appear to be carbon copies of a single format, with games like 'The Jumping Burrito', 'The Jumping Pizza', and 'The Jumping Taco' all playing the same.
It appears as if their primary purpose is to provide quick and easy platinum trophies for anyone wanting to boost their profile and up their gamer cred, yet a quick look at the game's assets (which some might argue have been clearly generated using AI) and you can see the signs of shovelware straight away.
Seems like Sony thought the same thing too, as every single one of the publishers 1,000-plus games have been removed from the PS store in every region, indicating that it was a targeted wipe.
There are still unfortunately far more games like this that are still available to purchase on the PlayStation store, but gamers have certainly allowed themselves time to celebrate this small victory.
"Now get the rest of 'em," wrote one delighted Reddit user, bemoaning the fact that "fake ass games drown out everything I'm looking for regarding new and upcoming releases."
Another wrote that it's "about damn time, please clean that s*** up," with a third adding that the store "really needs a higher bar for entry. I like looking through small games but damn it's impossible on the PS5 store."