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Sony Product Manager Urges PS5 Fans to 'Settle Down' Over Ads

Update: Bug has already been squashed

by · Push Square

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.

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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]

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About Sammy Barker

As the Editor of Push Square, Sammy has over 15 years of experience analysing the world of PlayStation, from PS3 through PS5 and everything in between. He’s an expert on PS Studios and industry matters, as well as sports games and simulators. He also enjoys RPGs when he has the time to dedicate to them, and is a bit of a gacha whale.

Comments 52

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!!

I mean, it's not like there's anything more important in the world than what Big Bad Sony is currently up to, right? People getting themselves all worked up and spewing hatred and bitterness towards Pro buyers and Sony in general need to take a step back.

The lack of perspective and lack of self-awareness on display in here most days recently is...troubling!

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.

Damage control at its finest

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.

It was refreshing to see the background image changed to something new after so many years.

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