Buggy PS5 Game Uninstall Complaints Joins Early Adopter Woes
Between unavailability, bricked consoles and other concerns, It's safe to say that the PS5 isn't off to the smoothest launch. | Source: CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP
- PS5 owners report issues with games uninstalling unprompted.
- Demon’s Souls, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla among the games affected.
- PS5 players report the problem with both physical and digital games.
PS5 owners have faced their fair share of teething issues with Sony’s new hardware, from bricked console to rest mode and corrupt database woes by way of persistent crashes. Technical problems are customary for new hardware and come hand in hand with being, let’s face it, a glorified beta tester.
One new issue that has risen to prominence seemingly since Sony pushed out the first PS5 system update has seen owners contend with a frustrating new issue: games seemingly uninstalling unprompted.
Multiple posts on the PS5 subreddit attest to this, with the issue manifesting for both physical and digital games.
Disc Eject Uninstalling Games
By and large, most owners report games uninstalling after installing and updating physical versions then ejecting the disc. Upon reinserting the disc, the game is nowhere to be found on the system, requiring a full re-install.
The problem doesn’t appear linked to a specific title. Multiple PS5 owners report encountering it with Demon’s Souls .
“I have Demon’s Souls on disc, put it in and installed the game and latest update, no issue. After a bit of playing I decide to see how a couple of my PS4 games are on PS5. Ejecting the disc completely removed Demon’s Souls from my PS5 (except for save data) is this a bug or do I have to painstakingly install a physical game every time I want to switch discs? Because that’s pretty dumb.”
“I got my PS5 today and whenever I remove the Demon’s Souls disc from the console, it needs to re-install the game and update.”
Others report the same problem with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Spider-Man: Miles Morales .
“I purchased a physical disc version of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla – after putting in the disc, it copies over as expected. I can open the game and play it. However, as soon as I eject the disc, the game disappears completely from my PS5. It seems that my saved data is kept over, but the game itself is gone from the dashboard, system storage, everything. Every time I reinsert the disc, it copies again.”
“PS5 Games getting deleted from internal storage and not showing up on home menu when physical disk is ejected. Has anyone managed to fix this issue? I’m experiencing this issue where I would have to keep re-installing the games and downloading patch updates when switching between Miles Morales and Demon’s Souls.”
Digital PS5 Games
As for downloaded digital titles, the issue has also reared its head for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Demon’s Souls .
“I played Cold War on ps5 this morning. Got back on tonight and my game said “download”… And it had to download 20 gbs. And it’s Makin me go through settings like I’ve never played before.”
“Mines done this twice now. First it uninstalled the YouTube app on its own, and it did it again just now with Demon’s Souls. I left the game up last night when putting into rest mode, turned it on just now with headphones on. I heard the game’s background for a second, then it cut to the Home Screen and Demon’s Souls is gone. Redownloading now…”
“Just happened to me on Demon’s Souls. Couldn’t talk to Blacksmith Ed after killing both the Dragon God and the Hellbreaker Demon, close app in an attempt to fix the issue, and next thing I know its telling me to download.”
According to one owner , there is a workaround, which involves waiting a few minutes to let the PS5 install the game itself rather than hit the ‘copy’ prompt that appears when inserting a disc. Not exactly the seamless next-gen experience you’d expect. At this time, there’s appears to be no viable solution for digital games other than painstakingly re-installing.
As with the other known issues with the PS5, it’s still too early to know whether this is a widespread problem. Fortunately, this being a software issue, Sony can likely push out a system update to address it and ease the frustration of those affected.
