Update: Just as we hit publish on this post, many are reporting their user interface has already returned to normal. It may take a little time for the hotfix to proliferate, but just sit tight – this is in the process of being resolved now.
Original Post: In a deleted post on social media, PlayStation’s Senior Product Manager Daniel Hiatt has urged fans to “settle down” over ads which have been added to the PS5’s user interface.
As reported earlier in the day, players had been irate over the firmware “feature”, which displays promotional news posts about a game when you browse through your library. We hypothesised that Sony may be using this feature to promote in-game events, like in live service titles.
However, in a post on X (or Twitter), Hiatt explained it’s a “new bug within an existing feature”. He’s since removed the message so we can’t share it here, but we saw it before it was pulled. Presumably this means a fix will be issued in due course.
Fans had been threatening to protest over the error, so this should help to calm the mood a little bit. As we’ve written in the past, we think Sony needs to do a better job of spotlighting the updates occurring within games, but this never looked right, so we’re relieved to hear it’s just an error.
[source x.com]
Comments 94
Anyone with basic problem-solving skills would’ve figured this out but sadly gaming is nothing but angst and Clickbait these days
It's fixed now.
Thank goodness, one of the things i dislike about the Xbox Ui is the ad’s on the homepage. I love the new widgets Sony uses. They are so clean and nice. The new welcome tab is a job well done from Sony, i am really enjoying it.
Yeah seeing a lot of people saying it's already been fixed.
Push back is good when company's pull this kinda BS. If you don't speak up it'll become the norm. No ads on my homescreen please
@Kanji-Tatsumi
Precisely.
This wasn't a mistake, it was a beta test to guage public reaction.
What do you mean fixed? We’re not done being angry yet!
That was fast, almost like if it wasnt a bug and they were actually testing the waters and immediately noped out before the backlash grew bigger 😂
But I'm glad to see the gorgeous artwork of each game back
It's already fixed. But I guess some people will keep pushing the story that it wasn't a bug.
And I feel sorry for the guy, the amount of hate he was receiving on Twitter simply for saying "settle down" is ridiculous. I wouldn't leave my house on a weekend to go back to the office and fix a bug that, despite being annoying, wasn't making any game unable to play.
It's a shame that now people are going to have to find something else to be angry about.
@LavenderShroud awww I was just done sharping up my pitchforks
It was ''just a bug''.
Youtube used the exact same excuse quite a few times whilst they were testing getting rid of the dislike bar and bringing in unskippable ads.
The ads are coming to PlayStation. You are the perfect pigeon if you think that they are not.
I don’t mind the ads at the free tier of Xbox (and PlayStation if they go that route) but I find it annoying that they are there for paid tiers as well.
It's fixed (we saw your reaction and we decided to revert back )
I'm not so conspiracy-minded that I believe this was all just a test (as if Sony needs confirmation that people hate ads) but maybe just apologize on X instead of telling people to settle down. Weird response.
I personally think the UI is still littered with way too much promotional BS but that's just me and anyway I've learned to live with it. Thankful this didn't add to it in any case.
Obviously something that isn't preferred, but the amount of outrage was a combination of funny and a perfect example of how awful the internet is nowadays. Even one of the articles here saying that their background was replaced with an ad was a bit dumb, when the backgrounds had been replaced a long time ago when PlayStation forced the Activity Cards on us, replacing the background artwork with an activity from the game.
So, that's a big reason why I think the backlash was stupid. The ads just replaced an activity card, both things I would ignore every time I went to boot up a game anyways. To be that irate about them, going as far as to protest over it just makes themselves look stupid. Also, to hate the employee trying to calm things down was people being their usual selves on the internet. A useless thing replaced a useless thing. Woopdidoo.
Gamers overreacting online again?
Well I never 😅
@Mangekyou Yeah and The Matrix is real and aliens live amongst us 😂
Grrrr I must be angry over absolutely everything grrrr stuff 🙄 nobheads
So these glitches in firmware never seem to give us less ads🤔
The problem Sony has is that we easily thought this could be intended.
In my case I feel I have less and less control of my console for each generation. No way to customise/personalise, feels more like a broadband media-box that you rent than your own gaming machine. And the constant reminder that everything is just a license, that Sony (perceivably) can change at will, don't help things much.
Maybe I just don't mesh with the UI. 😋
@LuXifer Someone else who gets it! I know all the other commenters here are much smarter than me and you but I had no reason to doubt this was intended. Its appearance being a little off wasn't a clear indicator either, instead it simply looked as if they botched the implementation.
Acting like more ads is far-fetched is borderline delusional though.
@LifeGirl i genuinely don’t think this was testing it. It wouldn’t make sense to do it with out of date stuff. Because that’s not really testing anything if everything ‘added’ is messy.
I do agree ads will come. Once one does it the other will follow.
“It’s not a feature, it’s a bug!! (pinky promise!)”
First this, then Verizon was out most of today...what next?
Yeah, 100% this was not a bug. You don't accidentally show an advertisement because of a bug, it has to be programmed to be shown. You have to tell a computer specifically what to do, it isn't going to serve an ad to a user just by chance.
The only way it could be a bug is if someone enabled the advertisement code before Sony was ready to push it out, but someone has written the code to display ads on the dashboard, that much is confirmed.
If it was a bug, it won't be in the wilds...
Now that "Official News" card in main menu removal... my workaround didn't work for long... 😟
For all the ‘it was a test’ crowd.
Did you actually get any ads for a game you don’t own? Because everything I’ve seen seems to be only for games they already own?
@Xeno_Aura - It was literally pulling the images from the last post in the Official News section that pretty much all PS5 games have in their own hub. This is not something new or anything like that. The Official News row/tab in games has been there since the launch of the console in 2020.
Devs already have any and all permission to do this by the way, Gran Turismo 7 for example changes its background to the most recent "Official News" one every time an update is released, EA changed the background of EA FC 24 to an FC 25 ad last week, no one complained about that.
I don't see any reason not to believe that this really wasn't a bug. They just released a new firmware that is still rolling out worldwide. Remembering that the same firmware broke Final Fantasy 16 and they fixed it soon after. Maybe we should start theorizing that Sony now hates Square and is trying to sabotage their games.
@ED_209 clearly Sony hate square.
SE wouldn’t let Astro bot use their characters. So Sony got their own back!!
It's so hard being a PS5 user these days!
/s
@Xeno_Aura They were not ads. On both other articles I commented that this didn't look like an intentional feature. Only two of my games showed these screens: Amnesia The Bunker with a Halloween update from 2023 and The Quarry with a Halloween update from... 2022. Oh the ads!
But, since Push Square added to the controversy and kept calling them ads, we're now seeing a bunch of people on here adamant that this was somehow testing the waters, when that just didn't make sense at all.
“Settle down.”
……. Way to treat your fan base over ads appearing on their systems.
Settle down people, for now it was just a trial run...
@HonestHick Still wish we got themes back though. I know it's on the Welcome hub but I'd prefer it if we could have it for the entire UI.
Yeah, not going to "settle down" over you trying to brute force subliminal marketing content on my console to shove down my throat in the comfort of my own home.
Guys, I would laugh the reaction off as funny but it's been unruly for a good while with vitriol for ... anything? I guess I will return to browsing the site from time to time.
@Secryt I'd say paying 550 bucks for a box automatically means you're no longer part of the "free" tier.
Not a bug. It was a test to see reaction. Sony is determined to keep doing the wrong things now.
@tangyzesty I didn’t realize patch notes are considered subliminal marketing, calm down dude it’s clearly a bug.
Makes sense, scrolled over my FF7 remake and it was talking about how rebirth launches tomorrow. Kinda figured something was off if that was supposed to be an ad. Same with gt7 it was pulling out of date news.
@Nepp67 Yeah that could be really cool as well. I like the PS5 Ui enough as it is now to not complain much. I have all 3 consoles and the widgets Sony has i think are excellent. I hope Xbox and Nintendo do them as well. I have them on my phone and love them there too.
Funny, I said it was a bug on one of the other articles and it turns out it was a bug indeed.
But the green bots have been already paid to say it was a feature to push ads and they will blindly believe it was so.
Glad the bug people were right on this one. It says a lot about how much we trust Sony at this point that most of us including staff instantly assumed it was a new ad initiative.
How a bug like that got into the wild is inexplicable. Gone are the halcyon days of PS4 stability.
Sure... it was just an honest mistake i'm sure. These things happen. We just accidently coded the patch to put adds on the game pages. Oops... my hand slipped and built the code. 🤷
In all seriousness, this is something they at least considered, if not planned for a future update
Phew! Well good to see Sony can communicate swiftly to their audience. Hey Sony, how about communicating some more games
Xbox has like 5+ rows of this stuff connected to the Xbox store let alone the 2 on the top level of the dashboard. 360 had many and yet look at the UI now it's more barren of just store aspects to say 'hey new games, videos, music, etc and the apps' yet that's just gone, so an offline 360 shows how it original was minus Bing and the actual ad spots along with the 'connect to Xbox Live' spaces, but same design it used to be.
Ads I get it but like come on people paid for the console and games, the store advertises enough as it is. If users go over to it they already know Sony, why not just put a picture in picture for it and be done with it like seriously. If you want the news scrolling things of What's New like PS3 in the top right corner again just do it. XD
If I wanted to check digital sales I would not a new button to warn me on PS4 I have to delete or access, or however they do on PS5 with each slot now. Besides the new/clubs or whatever for games.
I barely use the news on Switch. I do on occasion, but I don't have my Switch internet connected in the way of Nintendo accounts, I have one just not used it yet. Did after the Wii U/3DS eshop shut down to prep a Switch account. But otherwise besides updates I leave it as a offline system in a way currently and will use the account for eshop things in the future but physical currently.
I don't check news tabs unless I feel the need to and get my info from articles anyways so basically 99% of the time I don't because I already know what the platforms offer I don't need the company to remind me I seek out information when I feel like it not when Sony says 'hey listen', I and many others are not the casuals Sony would target these to for easy clicks/screen presence.
Reaction from beta role outs are just annoying, they know it will get the reaction so why bother doing it?
Do they think were stupid oh wait they don't listen to anyone but themselves and still pretend they listen when they don't. Money hungry idiots that don't know their audience but know the audience they want to target.
They just want to be in the news articles more even though we already know about them, and they had bad news weeks prior unless they absolutely loved that bad press and say it's good press/people will forget, THE INTERNET NEVER FORGETS SONY so shut up.
From archives to bookmarks to in our brains, we remember......
@Netret0120 thanks, Conspiracy Bill.
@MrPeanutbutterz a little like saying $1000 for a phone means the phone shouldn’t have ads. I think there’s a wee bit of gamer entitlement in assuming just bc you pay almost cost or under for hardware that provides a service that you don’t need to pay for that service.
It was pretty obvious that it was just a bug. I don’t know why there was so much angst about this.
In my opinion Sony has been very successful with the Playstation since the original ps1 launched. But with the launch of TLOU 2 Sony has made mistake after mistake doing little to improve the Playstation experience.
If people were genuinely irate or furious about a back ground image then they've got some serious issues, it made zero difference to anything. Just the usual professionally outraged few who love to complain just for the sake of it.
Well, PSN is down in Canada right now, so not sure if there’s been any fix…
That's assuming it was a 'bug' and they didn't just backtrack on a feature
@CielloArc "listen peasants! With the intense advantage of hindsight, I can declare my 50/50 gamble was right!"
I am sure if people had not complained, this would not have been a "bug" or an "error".
Sony didn’t like all of your comments and took PSN down. I hope you’re all happy!
@PsBoxSwitchOwner yeah, it showed me Lego Horizon on mine and that's not even out
I believe it's a bug, mainly because it was poorly done, it looked like crap.
OUTRAGE! SCANDAL!!
I'm moving to XBox!
Won't someone think of the chillllllldre....... oh it's fixed.
Bug or not, PSNetwork has been down for over 6 hours here in Sweden. Fix it Sony so I can do my daily races in GT7....You can add ads or whatnot some other day.
Yay calm ya tits everyone. All is well again 😅
Seems like it was a bug. Could be wrong, but on my console it was advertising a game something along the lines of "sequel out tomorrow 29 February". I think that was on Final Fantasy VII Remake tile. Unless this is different, but it was the background image.
I can imagine it was a feature for game devs to allow them to set the screen to their news but Sony set the default the wrong way round. I've seen people report it would make perfect sense to live service games like Genshin Impact. Which it would. Hopefully thats all this was.
It clearly was a bug. I'm playing Octopath Traveller 2 and the splash screen was 'Octopath Traveller 2 is out now'. Obviously it is - i'm playing it.
For those with tin foil hats on talking about coding. These images already existed in the same space. Clearly the bug was just showing them in the wrong spot.
I'm usually very cynical about this stuff and think Sony will squeeze every penny where they can. Advertising is very likely coming to the dashboard but this just was not it.
This was intentional. I advise you all to look up the video Mystic made about this. He launches Helldivers II after a while not playing and when he closed the game, his screen immediately turned into the last DLC expansion. As i said before: the discussion is that those "ads" were always already there, yet they were/are tucked a little bit further down in the game page on the UI. The problem is if is Sony is going to show ads instead of the art of the game that is currently showing on your PS5. So no, i don't want that *****.
Tried telling some people yesterday that it's likely a bug because very, very, VERY few people had it happening. But noooooo. I'm obviously a complete idiot. LOL! Comments about it were just further proof of the gaming community being extremely toxic.
@DDDD That is complete and utter nonsense.
@Almost_Ghostly off course. The Explore Tab is only available for a few select users in the world for the moment. It has to roll out for the rest of the world in the coming month(s).
@DDDD First off, I was saying your entire "intentional" comments are what's complete and utter nonsense.
Secondly, a few select users in the world"? LOL! What?!?!?! TONS of people have the Explore tab, including myself, and never had the ads. In fact, most people that haven't gotten the tab yet can get it by simply going to the "Feature Updates" section on their PS5 and running the update. This is different than the system software update.
And why are you changing the topic anyway? This was about the glitch that caused people to get outdated news feeds. It had absolutely nothing to do with the Explore tab.
@ED_209 how can it be a bug? Somebody wrote the code into the software, it didn't just appear by it's lonesome.
@Almost_Ghostly meanwhile someone wrote the code, not a bug.
Bug my left cheek. Normies will believe that story of course. If nobody would have spoken up they would have def stayed there.
@Almost_Ghostly I'm in EU, and must have chosen my words poorly. It's indeed about the latest firmware what i meant. Still, Sony has taken some weird decisions lately, and i wouldn't be surprised if this was a thing that is coming in the future.
The outrage from this was well funny. At least they know what it would be like if they ever did think about going down the ad route.
@Secryt Is this comment satire? Of course a 1k (or any price) phone shouldn't have ads.
And I'm paying for the service - the console doesn't sit there looking pretty, I pay for games for it. Oh, and I pay for PS Plus too.
Imagine thinking paying for and not expecting it to be a vector for advertisements is "entitlement".
"Oh crap , everyone is freaking out over this annoying new monetization plan we had for games."
"Eh call it a glitch and we'll try phasing it in next year..."
@DDDD I'm sorry but it has nothing to do with the latest firmware. Millions of people are on the latest firmware with the Explore tab and did not get the ads. They weren't even ads to begin with. They were news feeds, some of which were outdated, showing up in the wrong place. Ads would be like what I see on my Series X. For things like Fox News, Pizza Hut, Doritos, and Mountain Dew.
@MrPeanutbutterz People pay for cable tv and it still has ads. People pay thousands for a tv and it still has ads. People pay for streaming services that still have ads. People pay for games and Game Pass on Series X and that still has ads. People pay for games on Steam that also has ads. People pay $1k+ for a phone and it still has ads. People pay for internet service and there are still ads. Etc. etc.
I'm not saying ads are okay. I'm saying it's pathetic how people jumped on a "SONY SUCKS!" bandwagon (because of fake news that ended up being a glitch) yet were crickets about any other device they use that has ads.
@nicc83 Anyone that would say that obviously don't know Xbox has more ads. lol
The prominent ads on Xbox has numbed me. The 5 min oil change offer has been burned to my mind for weeks.
They say it was a glitch, but in reality they were hoping people wouldn't notice or pay attention. It was never a glitch, it was always planned, but they've seen the early backlash and backpeddled super quickly
Updating a firmware update with an update? Sounds so Microsoft-ish Omg Playstation used to be fun ....... oh wait, that was back in highschool with Spyro 3 and stuff...what an era :-/
@Almost_Ghostly Way to miss the point. None of my other consoles have ads (well the Series X did, which is one of the reasons I sold it), so I'm not about to start accepting them. And my phone doesn't have ads, my TV doesn't have ads, and I don't access the internet without an adblocker.
Regardless of this being a bug, people are right to be up in arms about it. If there's no kick back against these sort of things they quickly become the norm (seeing paying to play online with consoles).
Don't be naive,ads are coming and if that's the case,PC looks even more appealing,Sony oh Sony ps3 days are nothing compare to this days
Good to see it was a "bug", rather than a shift in design choice. Also an immediate backlash shows Sony the public feeling about AD bloat even potentially seeping into the UI.
For those saying it was a 'storm in a teacup', that may be the case but Xbox didn't go straight from the relatively slick, simple blades interface to baked in ADs, it was a slow boil frog until it was too late. For example, recently showing McDonald's ADs...
@DonJorginho ponies...
@Mangekyou I own a Series X, a Switch and a Wii U, some Pony that makes me! 😂
"We got caught, just tell them it was a really slick and polished bug that just looked like adverts"
@MrPeanutbutterz Steam has ads all over the place. TONS. Far more than any console has ever had. Yes, your phone and tv also both have ads unless you have an old flip phone and a non smart tv. And because you use an ad blocker, doesn't mean browser ads don't exist. Kicking back...against a BUG? LOLOL! HOW DARE THEY HAVE A BUG!!! SHAMEFUL!!!
@Almost_Ghostly Yeah way to double down on completely missing the point.
"Bug"?
Nice damage control, as usual...
@MrPeanutbutterz There is no point I'm missing. None whatsoever. And what you're clearly displaying with that last comment is that you've run out of substance to try to support your claims so now you can only resort to insults.
@Steel76 It was a bug. How many people did you see that this happened to? If it was intentional it would have been FAR more than an incredibly small handful that it was.. There are nearly 120 MILLION users monthly on PSN, yet like 5 of those people posted pictures of it happening. Yeah. Big Sony conspiracy!!! lol
@Almost_Ghostly You're missing the point that ads don't belong in the console space. And my smart TV doesn't have ads. And my smart phone doesn't have ads.
And that regardless of it being a bug people are right to get up in arms about it because checks notes ads don't belong in the console space.
Also, "you've missed the point" isn't an insult.
Show Comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...