New Controversial PS5 Feature Was Just a Bug, Says Sony

Sony says a recent tech error is to blame for the PlayStation 5 home screen suddenly showing advertisements to players, as the studio confirms no changes have been made to the way game news is shown to users. After many believed the sudden adverts were a new feature, PlayStation 5 owners blasted Sony for the sudden change, but the studio says it has now rectified the bug.

Shortly after the release of a new PlayStation firmware update, some fans began noticing that game tiles were now presenting related adverts to players instead of the game’s usual key art. Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, for example, was displaying a full-screen advert for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, despite the fact that the movie is now well over a year old. While this didn’t appear to be affecting every single title available on the PlayStation 5, it was widespread enough to frustrate much of the console’s community.

Thankfully, Sony has now confirmed that this is not an intended feature for the PlayStation 5 and was related to a “tech error.” In a new statement on the official Ask PlayStation Twitter account, the studio said the official news feature on the PlayStation 5 had experienced a bug, but that the issue has now been resolved. It went on to reaffirm to the community that no changes to the way news is displayed on the company’s flagship console have been made.

Sony Resolves Controversial PS5 Bug

The unexpected advertisement bug came just a few short weeks after PlayStation 5 launched the new welcome hub feature, a brand-new tab for the console’s home screen that allows users to customize the section with widgets, wallpapers, and vital console information at a single glance. By default, the welcome hub includes some advertisement widgets, but these can be removed if the user wishes to do so. While fans loved the customization offered by the new welcome hub, it all came crashing down when fans believed Sony had made adverts more prominent on the rest of the console. Thankfully, Sony has confirmed it was all just one big mistake.

While fans were pleased to hear that this was nothing more than a tech error, PlayStation users had other things on their minds as PSN went offline on October 1 for users worldwide. Although Sony addressed the advertisement error, it did not acknowledge that its service was currently having a global outage, resulting in frustration from the community. The sudden downtime meant that even users looking to play single-player games that were purchased digitally were unable to do so.