Nintendo has changed the way its eShop charts work, in a move that will seemingly reduce the number of cheaply made ‘AI slop’ games being heavily featured.
Digital storefronts, such as the PlayStation Store, Nintendo eShop, and Steam, have been criticised in recent years for their relaxed approach to publishing digital titles.
This has led to thousands of extremely cheap games appearing on the platforms, most of which are low-effort, misleading products often referred to as shovelware or ‘AI slop’ (due to a large number of games using generative AI images as part of the project).
It’s claimed that developers make each game extremely cheap because by selling enough copies it will appear higher in the storefront’s charts, giving the impression the game is popular and thereby selling even more copies. Now, Nintendo has made a move that will seemingly stop this misleading tactic.
Following Switch‘s recent software update, Nintendo has changed the way the sales charts on the eShop are calculated. Now, instead of counting the number of games sold over the past 48 hours and using that to rank the charts, it instead charts revenue across the previous 72 hours.
This means that games with rock-bottom pricing will no longer show up on the charts, as a $1 game would have to sell 60 copies to match one $60 game sold.
While this new charting method will likely hide lower quality titles, it may not be a win-win situation for all developers. The new system will seemingly benefit full-priced titles, and will likely mean a reduction in the number of games that have temporarily been discounted – including high quality indie titles – appearing on the charts.
Independent publishers have said repeatedly that heavily discounting premium indie titles often leads to a huge increase in players on Nintendo’s platform, due to the way the charts previously worked.
Last month, Nintendo said that eShop music won’t return for Switch 2, and likely never will.
