In a much-needed cleanup effort, Sony has officially removed three developers responsible for flooding the PlayStation Store with scam-like PS5 games, following growing backlash from both players and industry observers. The move comes after months of complaints about low-effort, copy-paste titles clogging the store, exploiting the platform’s algorithm and misleading unsuspecting buyers.
🎮 What Happened?
The three unnamed developers were responsible for dozens of shovelware-style games—often priced cheaply, promising trophies with little to no gameplay, or recycling the same mechanics under slightly different names. Many of these titles were:
-
Barely functional, with reused assets and poor performance
-
Designed specifically to exploit trophy hunters, offering Platinum trophies within minutes
-
Released in bulk, often multiple games per week, to dominate the “New Releases” section
-
Featuring misleading thumbnails and titles to appear legitimate or popular
According to tracking communities, these developers had released over 100 combined titles in the past year alone.
🧹 Sony’s Response: Long Overdue, But Welcome
Sony has now purged all their games from the PS Store and revoked their developer access. In a brief statement to press, Sony confirmed the removal:
“We’ve taken action to maintain the integrity of the PlayStation Store experience and have delisted developers who violated content standards and misused our publishing system.”
This crackdown follows mounting criticism that Sony had let shovelware thrive unchecked, degrading the PlayStation Store’s discoverability and frustrating smaller indie devs who were being buried under junk content.
🚩 A Bigger Problem: PS Store Curation Needs Help
While this move is a positive step, many are calling for wider reforms to Sony’s digital storefront, including:
-
Stricter quality checks before allowing games to be published
-
Better category filtering and sorting options to separate legitimate releases from spam
-
Transparency tools to identify known asset flips or minimal effort titles
-
An improved refund policy to protect consumers from misleading purchases
Players have long noted that the PS Store’s current layout makes it easy for low-effort games to climb visibility charts through sheer volume or easy Platinum trophy bait.
