According to Sony, changes to the PlayStation 5 game screen are a bug

A change noticed by PlayStation 5 players that caused promotions for YouTube videos, game ads and patch information to appear on the title screens of PS5 games was a bug and is being fixed, the company said late Monday.

Players scrolling through their game library noticed a major change to the system's interface: the art on the home screen disappeared when hovering over a game title. Replace: Patch information, news updates, and in some cases advertising for other games from the same publisher.

A September update to the PlayStation 5 operating system appeared to have changed the way information is displayed on game title screens. As a number of gaming sites pointed out (and CNET confirmed for several titles with a PS5), each game's graphics were swapped out with information that appeared to come from that game's news feed.

But the problem wasn't intentional, says Sony; Instead, it was a bug that the company says has already been fixed. At the time of writing, some titles on a PlayStation 5 we tried, such as Star Wars: Outlaws, had returned to their original state. In a post on

This followed a now-deleted post from Sony Senior Product Manager Daniel Hiatt in which he advised PS5 owners: “Calm down everyone; it’s just a (new) bug with an existing feature.”

A Sony representative did not respond to a request for comment.

Read more: What I learned from playing Sony's PS5 Pro

For example, before the fix, titles like Marvel's Spider-Man 2 featured a video roundtable on the front page with some of the game's developers as the main graphic. The art for Black Myth: Wukong, a recent big hit, featured a background image behind information about the game's latest patch notes. Star Wars: Battlefront 2 II contained advertising and pricing for other Star Wars games.

Even if the new graphics and information on the title screen were not advertisements for, say, Tide Detergent or Nike, they could still be considered promotional material and a major visual change. The new look drew criticism on news sites and Reddit from gamers who thought Sony might be introducing advertising and promotional content into its interface.

While the September update added new features like 3D Audio Profiles and Party Share, it also appeared to have removed an Activity Resume feature that PlayStation Lifestyle said only worked intermittently before it was removed.

This story was originally published on September 30 at 12:22 p.m. (PT) and was updated at 4:15 p.m. (PT) with information from the AskPlayStation account.