Summary
After many months of complaints from both game developers andPlayStation 5owners, Sony has seemingly begun delisting some of the low-effort spam games that have been infesting the PlayStation Store. While plenty of “bad"PlayStation 5games appear on the PS Store regularly, these spam games are often low-effort with very little content and churned out much more frequently than other titles. This has resulted in the PS Store being overrun with low-quality games, which has become bad news for both developers and players.
As the use ofAI continues to be a worrying trend in gaming, more and more studios are attempting to use the tool to aid in the development of larger triple-a titles. Developers like Treyarch Studios have been accused of using AI tools to create loading screens forCall of Duty: Black Ops 6, and although this is only a small cog in a much larger machine, it didn’t go down well with fans. However, there are much more sinister individuals using AI to assist them in churning out low-effort games as quickly as possible and putting them on storefronts such as Steam, the Nintendo eShop, the PlayStation Store, and more.IGNrecently spoke to a handful of legitimate developers who expressed their frustrations with this trend and now it looks like Sony could be listening.
Sony Removes PS5 Spam Games From the PlayStation Store
For players, the frustrating thing about these low-effort titles being everywhere is the inability to find some of thebest PS5 games. However, it looks like that could be about to change. As spotted by fans onPSNProfiles(viaTrueTrophies), Sony has taken down almost all of RandomSpinGames' titles from the PlayStation Store. The developer was known for contributing to the poor quality games on the Store, with titlesBodycam Shooter, Backrooms Brotherhood,andSupermarket Simulator Pro. Throughout 2024, RandomSpinGames released 19 titles, which simply wouldn’t be possible for most indie developers or triple-a studios producing high-quality games.
Sadly, there are still plenty more of these “spam” games on the PlayStation Store, but with Sony finally starting to clean up its storefront, there’s hope that more and more of these titles will be removed in the coming days, weeks, and months. It’s also not just PlayStation being affected by the issue, as Nintendo (among many others) has alsoseen scam games appear on the Nintendo eShop. An anonymous developer recently told IGN that Nintendo “is probably the easiest to scam,” before stating that once they were “in the door” with Nintendo, they could make “Fart Fart Boobie Fart: The Game” and “maybe it would eventually get taken down.”
While these types of low-effort games are seriously affecting players' ability to discover new titles, they also prevent legitimate indie developers from breaking through and finding success with their games. Thankfully, there are still ways for PlayStation users to find high-quality indie games on the Store, such as by visiting the PlayStation Indies tab, which shows numerous titlesGang Beasts, Cult of The Lamb, Sifu, Hollow Knight, and more. There is also currently abig sale on the PlayStation Store for February 2025, with both triple-a and indie titles on offer until February 19.
