Sony Quietly Removes Shovelware Games from PlayStation Store on PS5

Following an investigation from IGN, Sony quietly axed numerous titles from their Playstation 5 store. The removed games consisted of low-quality, AI-generated, and asset-recycled titles, commonly referred to as shovelware.

The investigation started after Kotaku and Aftermath detailed a problem plaguing both the Playstation 5 store and the Nintendo Eshop. These online shops are “advertising more and more and more games that are using a combination of generative AI and misleading store pages to trick users into purchasing cheap, low-quality games that aren’t what they claim to be,” Rebekah Valentine said at IGN.

Sony seemingly responded to the news by taking down some of the bloat from their storefront. Most games from RandomSpin – a studio that allegedly abuses AI and recycles assets, vanished from the PS5 store. 

As of February 10, Nintendo has yet to publicly respond to the concerns raised by the gaming community.  

The investigation was not aimed at legitimate indie studios producing low-budget games but rather at the increasing number of AI-generated titles flooding digital storefronts. These games, often misleading and low in quality, have multiplied rapidly, cluttering platforms like the PlayStation Store and Nintendo eShop.

“With the store filtered to show new and recently released stuff, I could look at what had been dumped into the store without any filters or algorithms getting in the way. And doing this is like opening up a raw sewage line,” Kotaku stated in regards to navigating the Nintendo Eshop. 

Sony’s swift actions in removing the shovelware from the Playstation store marks a significant step towards curating a higher-quality digital storefront – but the larger issue of AI-generated, misleading, and low-effort games remains a prevalent concern across various platforms.