By now, any and all PlayStation users would have noticed the rather drastic increase in shovelware invading the PlayStation game front. Now I’m not talking about indie titles when I say shovelware. I’m talking about cheap and blatant cash grabs by developers.
Games filled with nothing but bought assets, terrible thumbnails, and spelling mistakes throughout – again, if you’ve been on the PlayStation store recently, you know the type, and thankfully, it might soon be coming to an end.
Sony has officially announced that they plan to crack down on these trash games. In a document sent out to developers, Sony said that in the future, spam and duplicative content on the PlayStation Store would be banned. In addition, developers who don’t adhere to these new changes will find their games removed and their developer accounts banned.
Sony also clarified what characteristics they would consider spam or repetitive content. They would be products whose functionality and/or assets are copied or are not meaningfully different from products already published on the PlayStation Store, irrespective of the publisher of record. It would also be multiple concepts and product variants, published by individual partners, that have duplicative functionality or experiences, differentiated only by minor variances of functionality or assets.
As of now, we have yet to determine when this new directive will be rolled out, but at least there is light at the end of the garbage-filled tunnel.