If you’ve recently loaded up the Nintendo Switch’s eShop to buy something or search for a specific game, you’ve likely noticed that the digital store is filled with a lot of garbage that was likely made quickly and is only there to cash in on a trend or holiday. And worse, it seems Nintendo doesn’t give a shit, which could be bad news for the Switch 2.
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In late November, a post on the social media site Bluesky from Wren Brier, the creative director behind indie hit Unpacking, showed just how many obvious cheap copycats of the game existed on the eShop, brazenly using the word “Unpacking” in their own titles. It sparked a conversation about clones and rip-offs and now, weeks later, as Nintendo continues to ignore Brier, it appears the console maker is fine with its store becoming a slop factory filled with AI-generated images, cheap clones, and asset flips.
As reported by Eurogamer, Brier said on December 15 that after two weeks, the Unpacking clones were still on the eShop. According to Brier, Nintendo hasn’t responded to any reports of the “egregious scams” which the director claims are “using our trademarked game name” to “purposely [trick] Nintendo customers into buying cheap fakes.”
Kotaku has also reached out to Nintendo about all the obvious scam games and AI slop on the eShop but hasn’t received a comment.
And while it looks like the Unpacking clones did finally get removed, that doesn’t change how bad the eShop is now or how it seems to be filled with cheap slop. And to be clear, the eShop has been in a very terrible state for years now, but it’s only getting worse as Nintendo seemingly does little to fix it.
The eShop is a horrible, awful place
I randomly opened the eShop and filtered the store to show only newly released games. I did this on the web because trying to load the eShop on an actual Nintendo Switch is an incredibly painful experience that reminds me of trying to use the internet back in 2004. Anyway, with the store filtered to show new and recently released stuff, I could look at what had been dumped into the store without any filters or algorithms getting in the way.
And doing this is like opening up a raw sewage line.
I found at least five different titles recently uploaded that featured obvious AI-generated artwork. One of them, Bimfli & His Time Travels: Japan, features screenshots that seem to all be made using AI-generated imagery of children. The game was developed by Aldora Games, a studio that has released nearly 80 games since February 2023. And almost all of them are storybook games that use AI-generated art or reuse assets.
As we get closer to Christmas, you can also find a lot of holiday-themed slop, often priced low and relying on AI art to hopefully entice a parent or kid to spend a few bucks on some entertainment. Except you won’t get much holly jolly enjoyment out of most of these “games,” as they are just barely interactive storybooks with AI-generated text or public domain stories included. The ones that aren’t just boring storybooks appear to be bland-looking mobile game ports or hastily developed asset flips.
And what makes me sad is that as I dug through all the slop and scams, I saw real games made by small teams trying to break through all the garbage. People desperately trying to succeed as piles of sewage get dumped on them while Nintendo looks on and does nothing.
What sucks is that the Switch 2 is likely to inherit this store, as Nintendo is going to support backward compatibility on its next-gen machine. So all this slop and garbage is going to move forward with us into the next era of Nintendo. What a shame, not just for people trying to buy a game without falling for a scam, but for all the devs out there who have to figure out how to succeed in this nightmare.
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