PlayStation Issues Warning To Devs, Will Ban Easy Platinum Shovelware On Store

Sony has issued a warning to developers, saying that it will ban or de-list all shovelware and easy to platinum games from the PlayStation Store.

In its letter (via), in which PlayStation has addressed all developers who publish games on its digital store, stating that it will ban or de-list not only the shovelware games that don’t meet its Terms of Service but also the developers behind them.

The letter states that Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) strives to ensure that customers can search and discover the full breadth of experiences on PlayStation, and that partners have a fair means of being discovered. When partners oversaturate or “spam” PlayStation Store with many variants of the same type of content, it can negatively impact both the customer and partner experience.

According to PlayStation’s Terms of Service, content with the following characteristics is identified as “spam” or “repetitive”:

• Asset flips i.e. content that is functionally or asset-wise copied, and is not meaningfully different from other existing games already published on PlayStation Store.
• Multiple concepts and variants created by a developer that have duplicative functionality or experiences, differentiated only by minor variances/functionality/assets.

SIE recommends that developers should look into aggregating small, similar content experiences into a single game, where possible, and should instead consider in-game commerce to expand or extend the experience. , For example, the console maker states that offering different trophies for each game variant is not enough to differentiate them.

This can only be seen as a positive move, given how visibility and discoverability has been in an awkward place on the PlayStation Store due to the presence of shovelware games. Previously, the console maker made efforts to improve improved the curation of new games on the PS Store for PS5, making prominent releases more visible to its users. The PS Store now defaults to the “Best Selling” selection of games in general, allowing user view the most popular new titles at the top of the list under the “New Games” category.