Imagine scrolling a game store and finding it flooded with cheap knockoffs of your favourite titles: AI-generated art, suspiciously familiar names, no substance underneath. Sony just wiped roughly 700 such listings from the PlayStation Store in a single sweep.

What Happened on PlayStation Store

In late March 2026, Sony quietly removed the entire catalog of a publisher called NOSTRA GAMES from the PlayStation Store. While the Cyprus-based company had approximately 90 actual game titles, each was listed separately across multiple languages, regions, and console versions (PS4 and PS5), bringing the total number of delisted entries to around 700.

Another publisher, CGI Lab (also known as Play Lab), had its games removed at the same time, pushing the combined total past 1,000 removed listings.

Who Is NOSTRA GAMES?

NOSTRA GAMES had built a business model around volume over quality. The company released multiple titles per week and maintained an active YouTube channel constantly promoting new launches. Many of these games featured artwork that appeared to be generated by AI tools, and the production pipeline seemed heavily automated.

What drew the most criticism was the company's pattern of mimicking popular titles. Games like "Only Up Rush", clearly inspired by the viral climbing game "Only Up!", and "Trading Card Shop Simulator", which bore a striking resemblance to the hit "TCG Card Shop Simulator", used names and logos designed to confuse buyers into thinking they were purchasing something related to the original.

This practice has become known in the gaming community as "eSLOP" (a play on "AI slop"), referring to low-effort games that flood digital storefronts using AI-generated assets and misleading branding.

Sony's Ongoing Cleanup Campaign

Sony has not issued an official statement about the latest removals. NOSTRA GAMES stated on its Discord server that the company received no advance warning and was not given a specific reason for the delisting.

However, this action fits a pattern. In January 2026, Sony removed approximately 1,200 listings from ThiGames, which had been the fourth-largest publisher on the PlayStation Store by volume. ThiGames was known for the "The Jumping Food" series, games that could be completed in minutes and existed primarily to hand out easy Platinum Trophies. Midnight Works received the same treatment in 2024.

And the purge did not stop in March. In April 2026, the catalogues of GOGAME CONSOLE PUBLISHER, VRCFORGE STUDIOS and WELDING BYTE were wiped, along with individual titles including "Jesus Simulator," "Supermarket CEO Simulator" and "Water Blast Shooter - Wet Gun." Sony's curation arrives in fits and starts, but when it kicks in, it moves fast.

The backdrop appears to be an IGN investigation in which developers criticised the lack of quality control across the PlayStation Store and the Nintendo eShop.

These repeated actions show that Sony is systematically targeting publishers whose business model revolves around quantity rather than quality.

Why Shovelware Is a Serious Problem

The flood of low-quality games creates several real problems for the gaming ecosystem.

The most pressing concern is discoverability. When "New Releases" and recommendation feeds are cluttered with shovelware, genuinely creative indie games get buried. For small developers who pour their hearts into their work, being invisible on the store is devastating.

There's also a consumer trust issue. Budget-conscious gamers searching for deals may accidentally purchase a knockoff thinking it's related to a popular title. Unlike Steam, which offers a generous refund policy (within two weeks of purchase and under two hours of play, no questions asked), PlayStation Store's refund process is significantly more restrictive. Getting a refund simply because a game turned out to be terrible is extremely difficult on PlayStation, which makes it an attractive target for unscrupulous publishers looking to make quick sales.

Japanese gaming commentators have specifically pointed out this disparity, noting that the strict refund policy on PS Store essentially creates a "sell and run" opportunity for bad actors.

The Problem Isn't Limited to PlayStation

Shovelware and AI-generated game spam affect every major platform. A 2025 analysis found that roughly 40% of new releases on Microsoft Store were achievement-farming shovelware. On Steam, an estimated 20% of games released in 2025 used AI tools in development, and 40% of those earned less than $100 in total revenue, not even enough to cover the platform's listing fee.

Nintendo has also been tightening its stance, with reports suggesting the company has become stricter about generative AI content appearing on the Nintendo eShop and the upcoming Switch 2 marketplace.

What Comes Next

NOSTRA GAMES has announced plans to continue releasing on Steam, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch, demonstrating that being banned from one platform doesn't end the shovelware business, it simply redirects it.

The core challenge remains: Sony's approach is reactive, not preventive. Games get removed after publication, sometimes after weeks or months of sales. The PS Store still has no clear guideline on generative AI use at all. What would actually help is the boring stuff: clearer quality standards, mandatory AI disclosure, and pre-publication review that catches these titles before they reach a storefront.

A purge cleans the store for a moment. Then next month brings three more publishers. April proved exactly that.

What about where you live? Does your country's gaming community face similar problems with low-quality games flooding digital stores? How do you think platforms should handle quality control? Share your thoughts!

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