Stellar Blade PS5 Demo Published Then Pulled from the PlayStation Store

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Korean developer Shift Up just published – and then unpublished – a demo for its upcoming sleek action game, Stellar Blade, ahead of its launch on PlayStation 5 next month.

Fans excited to try out the futuristic combat-focused title were surprised to see the offer show up on the PlayStation Store earlier today. They were even more surprised, however, to see the demo removed from the store minutes later.

After it was unlisted, the Stellar Blade demo page simply featured a message that said it was “not available for purchase.” Now, as pointed out by Wario64 on X/Twitter, links simply lead to an error page.

This short look at Stellar Blade was live on the digital store for around 20 minutes, giving some fans more than enough time to download and dive in before its removal. Streamer yaboyroshi was lucky enough to grab the demo and even started streaming gameplay on Twitch. The Stellar Blade Twitch page is slowly filling up with other streams of the demo, with seven users showcasing gameplay at the time of this story’s publication.

With players actively diving in to showcase what seems to be some early moments from the game, it seems Shift Up’s demo might have made its way to the PlayStation Store a bit too early. There is currently no official word on when or if it will return. It’s a head-scratcher, but it seems the page was accidentally updated by mistake. It would explain why the demo appeared without prior announcement from Sony or Shift Up, though neither have released an explanation.

Stellar Blade comes to PS5 on April 26. Those interested in pre ordering it can see the rundown of purchase options here.

IGN has reached out to Sony for comment.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer at IGN