There’s something goofy going on over on the PlayStation Store and the Nintendo eshop. Over the last few months, the two storefronts have been slowly filling up with what some users are referring to as “slop.”

Kotaku and Aftermath have both detailed this problem, highlighting how the eshop specifically seems to be 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. This problem has recently spread to the PlayStation Store as well, filling the “Games to wishlist” section in particular with a lot of weird-looking stuff.

Critically, the games in question aren’t just run-of-the-mill “bad” games. Unremarkable games get released every day on every storefront and have just as much right to be there as any other game. What’s happening here is different: it’s a seeming flood of very similar-looking things that are crowding out everything else. The so-called “slop” games are usually sim games, almost always on sale perpetually, often play on themes used by other popular games or even rip off their concepts and names entirely, often use hyper-stylized art and screenshots that stink of generative AI, and usually in practice don’t look or play anything like what the storefront images promise. They are often janky, with poor controls and numerous technical issues, and often include very few features or anything interesting to do at all.

What’s more, as various users have pointed out, these games are often churned out mercilessly by a very small handful of companies. And as YouTube creator Dead Domain found out when they did a deep dive into the issue, these companies are seemingly impossible to track down and hold accountable, having little to no useful public websites or business information. Some even seem to be changing company names every so often to obfuscate things even further.

In recent months, there has been a growing outcry from users of both stores to get some degree of regulation on these storefronts and tone down what’s being referred to as “AI slop.” This is especially true in light of consumer complaints regarding the terrible technical performance of Nintendo’s eshop, which seems to be running slower and slower every day as more and more games clog up each page.

In an effort to get some answers on what’s happening and what can be done about it, I looked into how these games are ending up on these storefronts en masse in the first place, why PlayStation and Nintendo’s storefronts are especially egregious right now, why Steam is seen as inoffensive from a user perspective, and why Xbox’s store is (relatively) unaffected.

The Magical World of Cert

I spoke to eight individuals in game development and publishing all of whom requested anonymity out of fear of platform holder reprisal. All of them had recent, extensive experience releasing games on Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch in various combinations. Together, their accounts helped me better understand the process for actually getting a game released on any of the four major storefronts…which perhaps offers a clue as to why some game stores are suffering from more “slop” than others.

Very, very generally, the process for all four storefronts roughly goes something like this. First, a developer or publisher has to pitch to Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, or Valve who they are and what they want to ship on the storefront to gain access to development backend portals and, in the case of consoles, devkits.

From there, the developer or publisher fills out forms describing their game and what it entails. Platform holder paperwork tends to ask questions such as whether the game is single- or multi-player, if it requires an internet connection, what controllers it uses, and other technical elements. Then it’s on to “cert” (or certification, or lotcheck, all are roughly the same process), where the platform holder checks to see if the build fits platform requirements. These are very specific technical requirements, such as checking what happens if a save is corrupted, what happens if a controller gets disconnected during gameplay, and so forth. Helpfully, you can see a lot of the requirements for Steam and Xbox specifically on their respective public pages. Nintendo and Sony do not publish their requirements.

This process also checks to ensure games aren’t breaking any laws (such as including a red cross on a white background in violation of the Geneva Convention) and are accurate to their ESRB ratings. Multiple people I spoke to emphasized that platform holders are especially strict about age ratings, and that any change or seeming discrepancy can immediately and massively halt a game’s release.

A few people I spoke to noted that the lotcheck/cert process is often misunderstood by gaming audiences:

“A common misconception amongst The Gamers™ and even inexperienced devs is this is tantamount to a QA check,” said one publisher. “This is incorrect, that’s the responsibility of the developer/publisher prior to submission. The platforms check to make sure the game’s code complies with hardware specifications.”

If a game passes, it’s ready to be released. If it fails, it’s kicked back to the developer or publisher and has to be resubmitted with the issues fixed. Multiple people I spoke to told me that they rarely received concrete information from platform holders on how to resolve submission failures, they usually only received error codes. Nintendo especially was mentioned by several as frequently rejecting games and offering little to no clear explanation as to why.

Front and Center

As for the store pages themselves, those I spoke to told me that all the platform holders do have requirements of some kind asking developers and publishers to use screenshots that accurately represent the game they’re selling. But there’s no concrete process for checking that. The reviews of storefront screenshots, I’m told, are largely just to check to ensure there’s no competing imagery (i.e. a screenshot showing PlayStation button controls on an Xbox store page) and are in the correct language for the storefront they’re on.

One person did have a story about a review catching a screenshot that didn’t accurately represent the game in question:

“I know of one game that had to resubmit screenshots because the developer (who was not malicious and who is a respected team in the industry, but simply doesn’t have expertise in this process) submitted PC screenshots that had foliage and reflections that would plainly be impossible to render on the Nintendo Switch,” they said. “So Nintendo asked them if they were really from the Switch version and then they immediately realized their mistake. Nintendo’s store team does not have access to game builds, and the cert team does not have access to store pages. Frequently those teams may not even be on the same continent.”

I was also told that while Nintendo and Xbox review all changes to store pages before they’re allowed to go live, PlayStation just does one check near launch to confirm everything looks okay. Valve, meanwhile, does a review of the store page before it’s initially set live, but one person told me that after that, they never look at the page again. “You can quite literally submit the store page as one game, get Valve approval and then change everything and then put it live,” they said.

A few folks I spoke to did indicate that the storefronts in question do at least some level of diligence in their reviews checking to see if the product listed matches the game being sold, and that the description of the game given is accurate. But that diligence can vary wildly, according to one person:

“Typically, checking for accurate store information is not done in advance; rather, we’ve found that platform holders will usually trust the developer and what information they provide. In other words, developers get to ask for forgiveness instead of permission, basically.”

And even when a store page is checked, the standards for what counts as an accurate representation of a game are loosely defined enough that plenty of games can slip through the cracks. As another person put it:

“This can be as simple as “Street Survival: Homeless Simulator” [one of the examples of so-called ‘slop’ I sent this person when pitching them on the piece] explaining [on its store page] that you start from having nothing to getting harder as you progress, and their screenshots not displaying anything at this moment that breaks [Technical Requirements Checklist].”

What’s more, those I spoke to suggested that the punishment for having a misleading screenshot or one that otherwise breaks the platform holder rules is (usually) just being asked to remove the offending content. That’s not always the case – one person pointed out to me that developers have an incentive to do the best they can, or risk being delisted or removed as an approved developer. But something as simple as having a screenshot that’s not quite representative of the actual game usually results in barely a tap on the wrist…if the platform holder even notices it in the first place.

Also, according to everyone I spoke to, none of the three console storefronts have any rules about using generative AI in any way, whether it’s in games themselves or in generating assets for use on store pages. Steam does have a section in its content survey where it asks developers to disclose if there’s any generative AI used in their development or product, as well as explain its use in detail. But it doesn’t limit its use in any way.

Eshop to eslop

With that very generalized outline of the process out of the way, the question remains: why are Sony and Nintendo’s store pages being flooded with what seem to be misrepresented, low-effort sim games using generative AI on their store pages? Why is Xbox not impacted as much by this problem? Why does no one care that Steam also has a bunch of games that fit this descriptor? According to the people I spoke to, there are a few reasons.

Multiple developers explained to me that while Nintendo, Sony, and Valve all vet applications on a developer or publisher basis, Microsoft is the only company that vets on a game-per-game basis. This means that for the former three, once you have been approved once, it’s much easier to simply pump games out onto the storefront in question as long as it can pass cert or lotcheck. But because Xbox approves on a game by game basis, it’s less susceptible to the slop problem. “Which is why Xbox has fewer (not no) ‘game-shaped objects’,” one publisher suggested.

“I think [Xbox] really puts a lot of effort into their service,” said another person. “I would say they are tougher to launch on than something like [Epic Games Store] or Steam solely because they have pretty high standards for their pages and are very hands-on. In my experience, you work with their ID team directly to work through both your page and build cert. They will truly bend over backwards for you, even if you don’t see eye to eye.”

Over at Nintendo and PlayStation, it seems pretty clear that the process of approving on a developer by developer basis and focusing only on technical platform violations is resulting in a handful of companies gaining the ability to clog up both storefronts’ sales, new releases, and recommendation pages with samey, low-quality games plagued by generative AI store assets.

“Nintendo is probably the easiest to scam,” said one developer. “Once I’m in the door, I could make ‘Fart Fart Boobie Fart: The Game’ and maybe it would eventually get taken down, but it’s so odd.”

As a publisher pointed out to me, there’s even a special trick some use to both ensure their games are at the top of sales pages on the Nintendo eshop:

“So many games will release a bundle and set their discount for 28 days long, the maximum amount of time you can be on discount,” they explained. “They will then create a new bundle with a different (or identical!) configuration of game + DLC and set it for release the exact day the previous bundle’s sale expired rather than waiting for Sale Cooldowns. This causes it to constantly be near the top of ‘New Releases’ and always be in Discounts, at the expense of dozens and hundreds of real games that people worked very hard on.”

And another developer described a similar problem, this time on PlayStation:

“On all consoles, you get the opportunity to get featured, but you’re also on these automatic lists,” they said. “If people are just pumping crap into the system, you get pushed down the list. Any list. The systems are being overwhelmed and you’re going to get pushed out of there. I’ve been working on my game for six years, someone else has been working on their game for six months and makes a dozen copies of it…it’s just crushing.”

Though many users have attributed the eslop problem to generative AI, it’s not actually clear that generative AI is the main issue here. While it’s true that a number of these games appear to use storefront assets that were made using generative AI, others seem to just be generic concept art. The games themselves, whatever their quality levels, are still made by people. Generative AI technology is a far cry from being able to simply spit out a game that would pass even the most lax of the cert processes described to me. It’s also worth noting that while Xbox seems to be the least slop-ridden of the storefronts, multiple folks I spoke to suggested it would be the least likely to discourage developer generative AI use in the future, given its heavy investment in the technology.