In the last 48 hours, PlayStation’s YouTube page was getting a lot of action, and not for the right reason. PlayStation was heavily promoting a game that’s set to be released pretty soon, Ebola Village. The game has caught a lot of attention, for all the wrong reasons. Gamers were quick to notice that the font usage for the title, look, and gameplay were a lot like Resident Evil: Village, among other titles from the RE franchise. The backlash was so intense on the video post that PlayStation made the video private.
I’ve heard about Ebola Village before, and not for the right reasons, so to see that it’s being released for consoles, and that SONY was pushing ads for it, that’s got my head scratching. The game, developed by Russian game developer Indie Games Studio (such an original company name), goes by many names, but the common term being used to describe it is Shovelware Slop.
Shovelware is the tech/gaming version of Mockbusters, where low-quality copies of softwhere is massed produced and sold. In the gaming aspect, it’s producing low-quality copies of popular game titles in an attempt to capitalize on popular gaming titles. So it makes sense that with the arrival of the 9th installment of Resident Evil coming out next month, a game like Ebola Village is trying to capitalize on the growing hype. With the rise of AI and Asset Flips by developers, both indie and AAA are beginning to saturate the gaming market. Players are demanding better for the money they are willing to shovel out.
