{"id":1237405,"date":"2025-03-06T05:56:59","date_gmt":"2025-03-06T10:56:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1237405"},"modified":"2025-03-06T05:56:59","modified_gmt":"2025-03-06T10:56:59","slug":"meta-delists-max-mustard-richies-plank-experience-from-quest-citing-violation-of-platform-abuse-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1237405","title":{"rendered":"Meta Delists \u2018Max Mustard\u2019 & \u2018Richie\u2019s Plank Experience\u2019 from Quest, Citing Violation of Platform Abuse Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Toast Interactive announced their\u00a0VR games\u00a0Max Mustard (2024)<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Richie\u2019s Plank Experience (2017)<\/em>\u00a0have been removed from the Horizon Store for Quest. For now, it\u2019s unclear precisely why, however the veteran indie studio says the move has left them feeling \u201cbetrayed and powerless.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cUnfortunately, Meta has unilaterally chosen to remove Toast and its two games, Max Mustard<\/em> and Richies Plank Experience<\/em> from their store,\u201d the studio says in a post on X<\/a>. \u201cWe feel betrayed and powerless on many levels.\u201d<\/p>\n

While temporary delisting can happen by mistake, this doesn\u2019t appear to be the case. There is a reason, however\u00a0Toast Interactive says it can\u2019t talk about it yet, separately noting the studio \u201clook[s] forward to sharing our story with you all in the near future.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a Reddit post<\/a>, Toast Interactive says the reason will \u201cblow everyone\u2019s minds. But I\u2019ve been firmly advised not to.\u201d<\/p>\n

On both the Max Mustard\u00a0<\/em><\/a>and Richie\u2019s Plank Experience\u00a0<\/em><\/a>Horizon Store pages, the reason listed is the apps are \u201cout of compliance with Meta\u2019s Platform Abuse Policy,\u201d although there\u2019s no information on specifically how it fell out of compliance.<\/p>\n

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Image captured by Road to VR<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The company\u2019s platform abuse policy covers a wide range of offenses, such as pirated content, security exploits, or deception of any kind, however it also covers more nebulous areas that are likely left up to interpretation.<\/p>\n

Not following developer documentation, or \u201cany other provisions of the Meta Platforms Technologies Terms of Service or Code of Conduct for Virtual Experiences, or any other Meta Platforms Technologies terms, policies or guidelines\u201d can also get an app removed with or without <\/em>warning,\u00a0Meta says in its Platform Abuse Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Notably, both games are still available across their other supported platforms, with Max Mustard<\/em> supporting PC VR, PSVR 2 and Pico headsets, and Richie\u2019s Plank Experience<\/em>\u00a0supporting PC VR, the original PSVR and Pico headsets.<\/p>\n

This comes at one of the most inopportune times for Toast Interactive. Last month the Gold Coast, Australia-based studio\u00a0announced it was closing office and laying off a majority of staff<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This follows a first layoff round\u00a0in November 2024<\/a>, which affected 10 employees.\u00a0At the time, the studio maintained that while\u00a0Max Mustard<\/em>\u00a0was \u201cone of the highest-rated games on both PSVR 2 and Meta Quest, it sadly can\u2019t sustain a large indie team.\u201d<\/p>\n

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This story is breaking<\/strong>: we\u2019ve reached out to Meta for more clarity on the situation and will report back when\/if we receive a response, or as more information arises.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The post Meta Delists \u2018Max Mustard\u2019 & \u2018Richie\u2019s Plank Experience\u2019 from Quest, Citing Violation of Platform Abuse Policy<\/a> appeared first on Road to VR<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toast Interactive announced their\u00a0VR games\u00a0Max Mustard (2024)\u00a0and\u00a0Richie\u2019s Plank Experience (2017)\u00a0have been removed from the Horizon Store for Quest. For now, it\u2019s unclear precisely why, however the veteran indie studio says the move has left them feeling \u201cbetrayed and powerless.\u201d \u201cUnfortunately, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,110,123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1237405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games","category-unfiltered-rss","category-vr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1237405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1237405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1237405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1237405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}