A new report from achievement-tracking site TrueAchievements suggests that a significant portion of Xbox’s 2025 release slate was dominated by low-effort “shovelware” games designed primarily to farm Gamerscore rather than offer meaningful gameplay.
According to the analysis, nearly 40 percent of all games released on Xbox in 2025 fell into the category of “spam easy Gamerscore” titles. These are typically inexpensive, quickly completed games built around achievements that can be unlocked in minutes, often launching with the standard 1,000 Gamerscore and later receiving updates that push their totals as high as 5,000.
TrueAchievements’ data shows just how sharply the problem has grown. In 2024, around 1,370 games launched on Xbox outside of the Xbox Creators program. In 2025, that number surged to 2,262 releases — a 65 percent increase year over year. Of those, the site estimates roughly 881 games, or 39 percent, were designed primarily to deliver easy achievements. That represents a 204 percent increase compared to 2024, which saw about 290 similar titles.
1,194 PS5 Games Just Disappeared Off the PlayStation Store
PlayStation has purged over 1,000 games from its storefront, and it’s not exactly clear why these titles were pulled from sale.
The report points to a growing strategy among some publishers: releasing the same or near-identical games multiple times across Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC, each with its own separate achievement list. This allows achievement hunters to earn Gamerscore repeatedly from essentially the same experience — TrueAchievements argues that the scale of duplication seen in 2025 goes far beyond reasonable reuse.
One publisher highlighted in the report is Afil Games, which released 191 games on Xbox in 2025 alone. Many of its titles reportedly share similar gameplay and structure, differing mainly in art style, and hold average user ratings of 2.4 out of 5 or lower. Afil Games CEO Antonio Filipe told TrueAchievements that the company has no plans to stop publishing, and that additional Gamerscore-boosting title updates are planned for existing games.
The flood of shovelware had an effect on Xbox’s achievement ecosystem. Across games, DLC, and title updates, more than 63,500 achievements worth approximately 3.5 million Gamerscore were added in 2025 — nearly double the totals seen in 2024. TrueAchievements estimates that spam games alone accounted for 21,601 achievements and over 2 million Gamerscore, meaning roughly 58 percent of all Gamerscore added last year came from these low-effort titles. A significant portion of that total came from free 1,000-point updates designed to entice achievement hunters.
While the problem on Xbox remains smaller in scale than on some competing platforms, it is becoming harder to ignore. Sony recently removed more than 1,000 shovelware trophy games from the PlayStation Store, demonstrating a more aggressive approach to storefront curation. By comparison, Microsoft has taken limited steps, such as banning “bundle spamming,” where publishers repeatedly repackage games to keep them visible on store front pages.
