Which brings us back to punishment. AAA, AA, A, hyped, over-hyped, under-hyped - none of this should actually matter to Sony's curation if they were actively employing it. I mean, what's the certification process for if not weeding this stuff out before it releases?
So, let's take a look, and give Sony the benefit of the doubt. What was the last game prior to Cyberpunk 2077 pulled? Giving Sony the benefit of the doubt, let's pretend Sony doesn't certify every title released on PSN - they do, and developers have to pay a fee for Sony to do it - but let's pretend they can only focus on the AAA games released each year. Ok - were any of the botched AAA GaaS games that were unplayable for several days after launch due to bad networking and unstable servers pulled? Not a single one. Ok, but that's networking issues, right? Maybe that's different from crashes. So, surely Fallout 76 was pulled
when it was crashing consoles for weeks? Not at all. Maybe Anthem was pulled back when it was
literally bricking consoles? Nope. Sony gladly sold them both and took their cut. Flash forward to CP2077, and CDPR tells people to ask Sony for a refund. All of a sudden: poof - game's gone. CP2077 actually works mostly fine on PS5, and its not too bad PS4 Pro either, but Sony went ahead and pulled it from the entire PSN network and won't let it back.
Stepping away from the look-back, I have to ask: what's the differing factor here? Clearly its not crashing or bricking consoles. As far as I can see, the only major different is CDPR encouraging folks to interact with PlayStation's refund policy whereas Bioware and Bethesda didn't. With that in mind, Sony's response doesn't come across as "protecting the PlayStation community" to me, it comes across as punishing CDPR.
What was the last game before CP2077 that Sony actually pulled? I actually can't find one. If you can shed a little light, please do.