Does Sony remove games from the PSN Store?

I just bought the french edition of "Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together". I came with a promotion code for a 50% discount on "Vagrant Story" on the PSN. I did enter the code, and it was accepted saying I'll have a 50% discount on the game.

But when I tried to buy the game, I was unable to find it. It was released on the french PSN on december 2009, so it should be present somewhere, but it does appear to have vanished.

It can be found on the PSN website when doing a search, but it does not appear in the listing by genre.

So does Sony remove some of the game from the PSN ? And why ? I wanted to buy it, and I don't think that shrinking their catalogue is in their interest.

Edit: I would be interested in having a general answer to whether or not Sony pull game from PSN whatever the region. And if yes, what you think are their reasons.

I've found a lot of posts from people who are asking the same question as you: some examples are below.

• Outrun removed from US store - supposedly due to a licensing issue with a car in the game
• Joust and Championship Sprint removed from US store - supposedly due to licensing issues with the company that bought Midway (Midway titles were supposedly removed from the XBLA store as well)
• Bishi Bashi Special removed from EU store - no reason known
• Mortal Kombat 2 removed from US store - removed due to issues after a firmware update, was supposedly restored afterward

However, I don't see anything from Sony, even though they blog about games being released and people comment on the blog about other games being removed.

Despite that, I would answer your question yes, Sony does remove games from the store. Why?

• Legal reasons: they used to have rights to the game and don't now, or some content in the game is illegal in a region
• Technical reasons: something is found after release of the game or of a firmware update that causes significant problems for gamers
• Sales: perhaps someone can find a specific reason for this in the PSN store; maybe it's similar to the XBLA store, where low-selling games have been pulled to "make room" for more popular games

At least in one case, games reappeared in the PSN store after they were removed. Maybe Vagrant Story will eventually reappear too.