Sony Blocks PS5 Release of STONKS-9800 and Delists Indie Publisher's Entire PlayStation Catalogue
A Ukrainian indie studio behind a cult stock-market game says Sony has terminated its PlayStation partnership without explanation, blocking a planned PS5 release and pulling 13 games from the PlayStation Store.
Ternox Games announced the news on X (Twitter) on Sunday, August 16, 2026, opening a thread with the line: "So, let's start a 🧵thread about PlayStation games that Sony considers awful and will remove in just a week." The studio said Sony unilaterally ended its developer and publisher agreement — the contract that lets a studio build for and sell on PlayStation hardware — and gave no reason for the decision. PlayStation support, according to Ternox, refused to listen to its arguments or respond to its emails.
The games affected span the studio's five-year history on PlayStation. Thirteen titles are scheduled for removal from the PlayStation Store after August 23, including 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, and Bullet Beat. Some were made by other indie developers and published on PlayStation by Ternox, making the delisting a blow to studios beyond Ternox itself. The company said it apologised to those developers and expressed hope that Sony might reconsider.
The highest-profile casualty is STONKS-9800, a stock-market simulator wrapped in 1980s anime aesthetics, which Ternox released on Steam Early Access in 2023. The game — described by the studio as a chill simulator of an '80s Japanese stock-market businessman — reached 100,000 sales in March 2026 and carries a 97% positive rating on Steam, enough for the platform's "overwhelmingly positive" label. Ternox had hoped to bring it to PS5 in 2027, complete with a physical disc edition. That plan is now off the table, though the studio said it will create a physical edition for PC and Nintendo Switch instead. Releases on Switch and Xbox are still going ahead.
For context, "delisting" means a game is removed from a digital storefront — players who already own it can usually still download their copy, but new buyers cannot purchase it. For small studios that rely on digital sales, a delisting can cut off the primary revenue stream for a title overnight.
Some observers have suggested Sony's move may be connected to the platform holder's broader efforts to clear low-quality or repetitive software — sometimes called "shovelware" — from the PlayStation Store. That connection is speculative; Ternox itself said it does not know why the agreement was terminated, and Sony had not publicly responded at the time of reporting.
The episode leaves a studio with a genuinely well-received game — 100,000 sales and a near-perfect Steam rating — locked out of PlayStation entirely, while the developers whose work Ternox published on the platform face losing their PlayStation revenue with a week's notice. Whether Sony offers an explanation, or the delistings proceed as scheduled after August 23, remains an open question.
