Escape the Shovelware Pitfall: Smart Strategies for Discovering Quality Titles on the Switch Store

Key Takeaways

• Shovelware is cheap, low-quality software often found on the Nintendo eShop that capitalizes on popular games.
• Shovelware is characterized by low prices, frequent sales, and lack of reviews
• Beware of shovelware by looking for poor screenshot quality, misleading cover art, and taking the time to research titles before purchase.

As much as I love my Nintendo Switch, and spend more time playing on it than any other system I own, the truth is that the Nintendo eShop is filled with a disproportionate amount of junk. Much of it is designed to grab a dollar or two from you and take advantage of Nintendo’s stance on refunds—there are none. However, you can avoid this “shovelware” with ease.

What Is Shovelware?

Shovelware describes software, usually games, that are made as cheaply and poorly as possible and then shoved into online stores en masse with the hope that a few clueless customers will spend money on them. This has been an issue ever since you could buy games from online stores, and the Nintendo Wii in particular had a massive shovelware problem.

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There’s a misconception that a company like Nintendo won’t let low-quality games into their store, but the truth is that any quality controls that are in place relate to basic technical requirements, and it’s possible for developers to make cheap, trashy games while still complying with those rules. Also, whether a game is bad is mostly subjective, so it’s not up to platform holders like Nintendo to make that judgment.

While I cover how to identify shovelware in this article, I’m deliberately not going to call out specific games as examples of shovelware. This is for a few reasons, but mainly because some games that end up being indistinguishable from shovelware are the result of a sincere effort to make a good game. I don’t want to put developers who were really trying on blast for publishing something that misses the mark. There are shovelware lists online, if you’re looking for specific names. With that said, here’s how you can figure out that you’re looking at shovelware.

It Rips Off Popular or Premium Games

While it’s perfectly fine for successful and popular games to spawn “clones”, there’s a big difference between a great game inspired by another great game, and a sloppy cash-grab. Lots of shovelware games will try to capitalize on popular games by pretending to be similar to them in some way, so that people who either liked the original game or perhaps can’t afford them yet will buy it. You also see this sort of thing with platform exclusives from other consoles, where there are ripoffs of games like God of War or The Last of Us, to name but two examples.

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It’s Insanely Cheap

The hallmark of shovelware games is an extremely low price. If the non-sale price of a game is a dollar, then it’s not likely you’re buying the most premium of products. With Nintendo, all sales are final , so once the shovelware developer has your dollar, then it’s gone forever. Even worse, that game is now stuck in your Switch library forever too!

Lots of shovelware developers tend to have their games on sale constantly at 90% off. So a game listed for $10 might sell for a buck, which also pushes it to the top of the eShop’s list if you arrange by discount percentage. Of course, there are plenty of awesome games that get huge discounts like this too, but most games selling for so little money are invariably shovelware.

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There Are No Reviews

I always look for reviews on games before I buy them on the eShop, no matter how cheap they may be. Whether that’s a professional review on a dedicated gaming website or a YouTube video review, I need to see something of what a third-party person thinks before even considering handing over my hard-earned cash. If there are no reviews at all, that’s a good sign that the game is of such low quality, that it’s not even worth writing a review telling you so.

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The Screenshots Look Terrible

Even without seeing the game in action, you can usually tell from the eShop screenshots that the game in question doesn’t have much to it. Poor graphics, flipped assets, bad art direction, or exceedingly simple visuals that could be slapped together over a week are all key signs in a screenshot that what you’re looking at is more of a scam than an actual game.

The Cover Art Is Visual Clickbait

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When browsing the eShop, the first thing that catches your attention is a game’s cover art. This is true for all games, of course, but this means the cover is where shovelware developer will actually put in some effort. After all, it’s easier to create a nice cover than to make an entire game. Now, in the age of AI image generators , it’s easier than ever to make awesome covers too. It’s a little like the old days of Atari games, where the game art would be amazing shots of dragons and robots battling it out, and the actual game is just two colored blocks bumping into each other.

Also, you might notice shovelware that really leans into the whole “sex sells” philosophy, with scantily clad characters or really suggestive artwork, which you’d never associate with a gem-swapping game or a Galaga clone.

There are so many great games on the eShop , with such frequent sales, that there’s little reason to waste your money on shovelware titles. If you just take a second to suss out the trash, you’ll ensure your Switch library is filled with nothing but timeless classics and hidden gems.