Sony has revealed that the recent ads that appeared on the PS5 home screen was all because of a bug aka "tech error".
If you’ve been on your PS5 recently, you might’ve noticed something weird going on with your home screen. Instead of seeing the usual cool artwork when you highlight a game, a lot of people were getting hit with big, ugly ads. Some of these ads were completely random or outdated, like old news stories or expired discounts. In one case, if you highlighted Horizon Zero Dawn, you might’ve seen an ad for a Lego version of the game—which obviously doesn’t even exist.
Ads on PS5 Homescreen and Players' Confusion
At first, a lot of PS5 users thought Sony was pushing more ads on them, which led to a bunch of frustration. Some people even speculated that this might be a way to prepare for the launch of the new PS5 Pro. It didn’t take long for social media and forums to fill up with complaints. People were upset that their home screen looked messy and cluttered, and they really missed the clean, beautiful game backgrounds they used to have.
But Sony responded pretty quickly to calm everyone down. It turns out, this whole situation was just a bug. On their Ask PlayStation account, Sony confirmed that there was a "tech error" with the Official News feature on the PS5. They assured players that no real changes had been made to how the PS5 shows game news. The good news is, everything is back to normal now.
A tech error with the Official News feature on the PS5 console has since been resolved. There have been no changes to the way game news is displayed on PS5.
— Ask PlayStation (@AskPlayStation) September 30, 2024
For a few days though, it was definitely annoying for a lot of PS5 users. The bug caused the system to display irrelevant and outdated news stories behind game icons. Some ads were promoting sales that ended months ago, and on top of that, the images were low-quality, making them hard to even read. It totally ruined the sleek design that PS5 users love.
Luckily, by the evening of October 1st, Sony had fixed the issue. Many people noticed that after restarting their PS5, the original game art returned, and those weird ads were gone. While it was frustrating for a bit, players were relieved to find out it was just a temporary bug.
This whole mess actually happened around the same time Sony dropped some big news. They just announced the PS5 Pro, a more powerful version of the PlayStation 5. Pre-orders are already open, but stock seems to be pretty limited. On top of that, Sony released special 30th-anniversary editions of both the PS5 and PS5 Pro, but they sold out almost immediately after pre-orders opened.
There’s also talk of a new update for the regular PS5 that will let users customize their home screens. That update hasn’t rolled out to everyone yet, but some people think the bug with the game backgrounds might’ve been connected to that new feature.
So it turns out that the recent PS5 UI update that let you disable all the advertisements on the dashboard was too good to be true. Now EVERY SINGLE GAME on your homescreen shows you an advertisement in the background with no way to remove them lol https://t.co/Nts6eCq8Eb pic.twitter.com/29p56mYn34
— Earl Turlet (@alfredobofa) September 29, 2024
In the end, the home screen issue was pretty annoying for a few days, but it’s nice to know it was just a bug and not something permanent. Sony was quick to fix it and let everyone know what was going on. Hopefully, the next update won’t come with any surprises like this one.