PlayStation Users Are Finding Random Games On Their Profiles – Is It A Security Problem? – WGB
It’s been a brutal week for the gaming industry. The Xbox seems to be coming in every five seconds, reports of possible layoffs are mounting, studios may be on the recording block and everything tends to catch fire.
So, naturally, PlayStation decided to enter the conversation with one of the strangest stories I’ve seen in ages: random games appearing on people’s PSN profiles, including uncomfortable titles that would be a nightmare to explain to your parents, colleagues or anyone who has access to your recently played list.
A Reddit thread on r/PlayStation has exploded after one user said that mysterious games have started appearing on their PlayStation profile, despite not having them or playing them. That alone would be weird, but the comments quickly flooded in with other people saying the same thing happened to them.
The story is already strange enough, until you read the names of the games. Users reported titles such as Sex Shop Simulator, Sex Shop Simulator, Hentai Princess, Quiz Thiz Germany, Horror Night with Tung Tung Tung Sahur, Avatar Island and, for some reason, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Because apparently even the mysterious PSN gremlin enjoys a season of Kevin Spacey Call of Duty in between pretending to run a sex shop.
The funniest part, we think this is a weird bug and not a security breach, is that some of these games reportedly seem to have ridiculous play times. We don’t talk for a few seconds here and there. Some users claim that these mystery games appear with thousands of logged hours. Yes, thousands of hours in Sex Shop Simulator.
One ResetEra thread discussing this issue has the title: “My PSN profile shows I’ve played the unreleased game for over two thousand hours.” That thread specifically mentions Sex Shop Simulator as one of the games added to profiles. Meanwhile, on PSNProfiles, users are also discussing the issue in a thread titled “PSN account hacked…?” with a few people reporting similar mystery games and mindless hours counting.
At the moment, the general pattern seems to be this: users say they have two-factor authentication enabled, they say there are no similar purchases in their transaction history, and many of them report the same small collection of games. That makes it look less like a typical account compromise and more like a weird PlayStation issue, metadata error or possible exploit.
To be clear, there is currently no evidence that these accounts have been hacked or accessed. There’s also no official comment from Sony at the time of writing, so we don’t really know what’s causing it. It’s possible that Sony will never talk about it, because they rarely admit things like this.
Still, it’s hard not to raise an eyebrow at the moment.
Sony’s account security has been under scrutiny recently after former IGN reporter and current broadcaster Colin Moriarty publicly discussed losing access to his PlayStation account in what he described as a case of social engineering. Moriarty has since said he has been pushing Sony to fix the problem, which has affected many users over the years. Many of them never recovered their accounts.
That situation seems to be a separate story from anything going on here, but it does mean that another weird PSN account-related problem that will pop up a few weeks later is going to freak people out. Rightfully so, too.
Again, this could be a silly little profile glitch. Deeply funny, admittedly, especially when the poor teenager now has to explain why Hentai Princess and Sex Shop Simulator appeared on their PlayStation profile with enough hours logged to qualify for a full-time job.
But as funny as the story is, there’s a very serious question underneath: how are these games attached to people’s profiles in the first place?
If this is just a display bug, Sony should be able to clear it and hopefully remove the affected games from people’s accounts. If it’s something you don’t know about including storefront listings, profile metadata or exploits that shovelware developers exploit, then that’s a big concern.
For now, the best advice is boring but reasonable: check your transaction history, make sure two-factor authentication or passkeys are turned on, change your password if you’re worried, and maybe hide the offending games from your public profile until Sony figures out what’s going on.
Because no one wants to be remembered on their friends list as someone who somehow logged 8,000 hours in a sex shop simulator in one night. Or maybe you do. Who am I to judge? No, scratch that. I judge.
