Sony's shovelware purge claims another publisher as Webnetic announces PlayStation exit

Webnetic has announced its "journey on PlayStation" is coming to an end, making it the latest publisher to get swept up in Sony's ongoing shovelware crackdown. The publisher broke the news on X/Twitter, urging players to grab its games before they disappear from the store.

The scale of Webnetic's catalog is genuinely staggering. It has 128 individually named titles on the PlayStation Store, but once you factor in separate PS4 and PS5 versions, regional variants, and endless sequels, TrueTrophies puts the real total at 1,274 entries — enough to rank it fourth among all publishers on the platform. Its 2025 release A House That Glows alone has eight separate purchasable versions, each essentially a trophy-farming vehicle. The publisher is also behind multiple versions of The Golden Age from August 2022 and its follow-up The Copper Age from September 2022. In its farewell message, Webnetic thanked its players and confirmed it isn't shutting down entirely — it's moving operations to Xbox, Nintendo, and Steam, where it plans to keep publishing new projects and push updates for Panic House: Awakening.

Sony's cleanup campaign has been running for several months now. The company pulled hundreds of ThiGames titles in January, then went after GoGame Console Publisher, VRCForge Studios, and Welding Byte in April. Shovelware refers to cheaply produced, often exploitative games that flood storefronts with knockoffs and low-effort releases designed to game platform reward systems rather than offer genuine experiences.

No firm removal date has been given for Webnetic's PlayStation catalog. Sony hasn't issued a public statement on this specific case.