Toast Interactive announced their VR games Max Mustard (2024) and Richie’s Plank Experience (2017) have been removed from the Horizon Store for Quest. For now, it’s unclear precisely why, however the veteran indie studio says the move has left them feeling “betrayed and powerless.”
“Unfortunately, Meta has unilaterally chosen to remove Toast and its two games, Max Mustard and Richies Plank Experience from their store,” the studio says in a post on X. “We feel betrayed and powerless on many levels.”
While temporary delisting can happen by mistake, this doesn’t appear to be the case. There is a reason, however Toast Interactive says it can’t talk about it yet, separately noting the studio “look[s] forward to sharing our story with you all in the near future.”
In a Reddit post, Toast Interactive says the reason will “blow everyone’s minds. But I’ve been firmly advised not to.”
On both the Max Mustard and Richie’s Plank Experience Horizon Store pages, the reason listed is the apps are “out of compliance with Meta’s Platform Abuse Policy,” although there’s no information on specifically how it fell out of compliance.
The company’s 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.
Not following developer documentation, or “any 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” can also get an app removed with or without warning, Meta says in its Platform Abuse Policy.
Notably, both games are still available across their other supported platforms, with Max Mustard supporting PC VR, PSVR 2 and Pico headsets, and Richie’s Plank Experience supporting PC VR, the original PSVR and Pico headsets.
This comes at one of the most inopportune times for Toast Interactive. Last month the Gold Coast, Australia-based studio announced it was closing office and laying off a majority of staff.
This follows a first layoff round in November 2024, which affected 10 employees. At the time, the studio maintained that while Max Mustard was “one of the highest-rated games on both PSVR 2 and Meta Quest, it sadly can’t sustain a large indie team.”
This story is breaking: we’ve 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.
