Nintendo has quietly made some subtle changes to its guidelines for developers publishing games on its Nintendo Switch 2 eShop, seemingly in an effort to slow an oft-criticized flood of low-effort “slop” content that’s been crowding out other games and frustrating users.
Earlier this year, we reported on a growing epidemic of “slop” games flooding the recommendation pages of multiple gaming storefronts, most prevalently on the PlayStation Store and Nintendo eShop. Many of these games shared a number of commonalities: obscure publishing companies with little available public information, very little game content, low-quality assets, numerous bugs, inaccurate store page descriptions, and often AI-generated storefront art that wasn’t representative of the game itself. A number of them also centered around adult content.
Since then, IGN has once again spoken to multiple developers with access to the Nintendo Switch eShop developer and publishing portal, who have shown us a new set of guidelines for publishing games on the Nintendo Switch 2 eShop specific to the platform’s storefronts in Japan and other regions of Asia. Critically, these rules seem to include attempts at curbing the flow of “slop”, reducing the amount of adult content recommended on the front pages, and making the Nintendo Switch 2 eShop storefront, at least, more user-friendly than its predecessor.
The New Rules
The guidelines, which took effect on June 5 (the day of the Nintendo Switch 2’s launch), cover a wide range of topics, including how game bundles can be sold, restrictions on sensitive content, prohibitions on inaccurate product descriptions, and when and how product information can be updated.
First, regarding bundles, the restrictions state that in the first year of a game’s release, only a maximum of five game bundles may be distributed. After the first year, that number goes up by one for each year the game is available, up to a maximum of eight different bundles. This seems to be a direct response to developer concerns in our previous reporting that some companies were simply creating “bundle spam” and offering deep discounts on new bundle after new bundle to keep their game at the top of eShop listings.
Many of the new guidelines discuss “sensitive content,” and include specific rules for what qualifies as sensitive content in the first place. Listed criteria that “would be considered damaging to the Nintendo brand” include sexualization of children, overly sexual content, discrimination and hate, exploitation of social issues (“Content that clearly exploits a topical and controversial social issue, tragedy, or catastrophic event”), instructing criminal activity, and political statements (“Content that overtly supports or criticizes real-life countries, organizations, or ideologies”). Nintendo states in the guidelines that it reserves the right not to distribute a game, but claims it offers the guidelines to help developers understand its reasoning in certain situations. “We encourage you to take this information into consideration when developing content for potential release on our platforms and before submitting such content to Nintendo,” the guidelines state. It also disclaims that the guidelines are not an exhaustive list, and that sometimes “determinations may be made on a regional basis.”
Another new guideline includes a prohibition against inaccurate descriptions of games. It reads, in full: “It is prohibited to provide inaccurate descriptions of the contents of a product. It is prohibited to provide description of the content of a product as under development if it is not expected to be implemented in the product.”
Other guidelines prohibit changing the name of a product without good reason (“drastic update”) or to make it consistent with a game’s name on other platforms or with other games in a series. Developers are also prohibited from changing information on the product page after the page is live. And developers are asked to contact Nintendo representatives if they intend to distribute an application “that does not include game elements.”
The section concludes with the following:
“In the even [sic] of any violation of these guidelines, Nintendo may refuse to sell the product, request revisions, limit the scope of disclosure by not displaying it on various pages including Nintendo eShop home page or suspend distribution on Nintendo platforms regardless of the reason.
“Notwithstanding these guidelines, similar measures may be taken if Nintendo reasonably determines that there is a violation of laws, regulations, or other contracts, rules, etc.”
Stop the Slop
As we were working on this story, an article came to our attention that seemed to be evidence of at least one of the new policies being enforced. Last month, Automaton reported that a game series called Hentai Girls (a game about compiling jigsaw puzzles of anime women in various states of dress and undress). Per the report, Hentai Girls, which has historically been criticized for having some of the hallmarks of the “slop” games previously discussed, would be renamed to “Kawaii Girls” going forward. As Automaton reported, Hentai Girls games are currently very easy to find in the Nintendo Switch eShop, but are challenging to find on the Nintendo Switch 2 eShop, only showing up if searched for directly by publisher name. What’s more, this issue doesn’t seem to impact the U.S. eShop, suggesting that the Nintendo Switch 2 eShop in Asia is restricting the word “hentai” in a way that isn’t being enforced in the U.S. or on the Nintendo Switch 1. While there’s been no official confirmation of why this is happening, this development appears to be in line with the new guidelines.
Earlier this year, when we wrote about the issues with the various console storefronts and their respective relationship with “slop,” or low-effort spam content, we spoke to a number of game developers about their concerns. They told us they were frustrated with Nintendo’s penchant for a lack of enforcement, and willingness to let companies flood the eShop with dozens of games containing minimal content, misleading storefront pages, cheap and recycled assets, or game-breaking bugs. These games have historically caused issues for developers by crowding out games that studios spent years working on, often manipulating sales and bundles to stay at the top of recommendation pages in the eShop and making it difficult to discover other games.
Whether they exercise this right to combat slop is an unknown.
We reached back out to some of the same developers we spoke to for the first article, as well as some new developers, all of whom had experience publishing their games on the Nintendo Switch eShop in both the United States and Asia. All of the people we spoke to were able to confirm the content of the new guidelines, and everyone we spoke to seemed to think that the new guidelines were created at least in part due to concerns about “slop.” However, their opinions on the efficacy of those guidelines varied.
One developer commented on the restrictions on bundle spam to say that a more helpful method of curbing issues with developers taking over the page would look more akin to what Steam has — better tagging and recommendations. “Their algorithm will more or less naturally bury AI slop or very low-effort releases. Sure, not every ‘good indie’ rises as high as they should but the visibility situation for indies with no marketing budget is significantly better on Steam. It gives you a shot when you release. On the Nintendo eShop you just get filed into an endless list of releases never to be seen by anyone. Unless you have a big name outside Nintendo already (like e.g. Balatro last year), it’s close to impossible to stand out.”
Another developer commented that Nintendo has always been able to refuse anything from the store at their discretion, even before these new guidelines. “Whether they exercise this right to combat slop is an unknown,” they said. “In principle, I think the latest guidelines are a step in the right direction and will help the situation that was running rampant before. To what extent remains to be seen.”
And still another developer agreed, while stating they believed that the new guidelines didn’t go far enough.
“For example, they now limit a new release to participating in five bundles within the first year, but if each of those bundles can span a month that means you can still have your game discounted for nearly half of the first year. It also seems like these new guidelines are only for Japan/Asia. I don’t know why they wouldn’t apply them globally. But it’s good to see them covering issues like deceptive product descriptions (e.g. promising features that don’t exist) and misleading screenshots.”
Yet another developer I spoke to expressed a different concern – that stricter regulations might harm legitimate games that deal with more serious or mature themes. “I would say personally I would be curious to see how Nintendo will handle games that deal with serious topics, or if they will try to lean away from having more mature game that deal with such subjects, even when handled carefully or in positive support of such groups (Supporting gender expression, ethnicity, religion, ect.)” This developer also specifically mentioned the horror genre, with games like The House in Fata Morgana and The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories cited as having sensitive content, but which is contextualized within the story.
Just from my own firsthand experience of the Nintendo Switch 2 eshop in the U.S., it’s clear there have been some improvements. There are more targeted sections to browse now, meaning it’s easier to organically stumble upon a game I might enjoy based on my interests. That said, it’s worth pointing out the double-edged sword of curation here: most of the top-level recommendations are already fairly popular games, ones that likely are already selling well or are critically acclaimed. It remains challenging for excellent, otherwise unknown games to break out on the eShop, whether it’s because they’re being buried by publishers pumping out multiple cheap games per month on one storefront, or because it’s nigh-impossible to get storefront prominence anyway.
“The flood of low effort games in digital marketplaces is definitely a concern to me as an indie developer,” one developer said. “The space is already wildly competitive, and these stores don’t always provide great discoverability (the eShop is particularly bad, even on Switch 2, though at least it runs much faster now!), so it sucks that we have to compete for visibility with bad actors who are just running a grift. The increased prevalence of gen AI has only made the problem worse, unfortunately (but predictably). It feels like there’s so much room for improvement in all of these stores and it’s a bit frustrating to see platform owners moving so slowly on this.”
Nintendo did not return our request for comment.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
