Late last year, I replayed Assassin’s Creed III via the remastered PS4 edition. I played it on my PS5 and after completing it, I deleted the game. Yet its digital ghost haunted my PS5 for months. Finally, this weekend, I removed it thanks to a random Twitter user and Greg Miller.
I installed Assassin’s Creed III Remastered on my PS5 in December. A few days after Christmas, I had finished the main campaign and most side content. I deleted it and moved on with my life. But the next time I loaded up my PS5 I noticed that to the left of the main PSN Store icon, a new ghostly box had appeared. It was the spirit of the recently deleted ACIII Remastered. I was confused. But I assumed it was something that the PS5 would deal with on its own. A restart or a new game being added to the dash would surely fix it and remove the ghostly remains.
Then March 2021 rolled around and the box was still there. After all this time, I had just gotten used to it. It was just a part of my PS5. A weird annoying reminder that these next-gen consoles probably needed some more time in the oven before being sold to folks.
However, on Saturday night I saw Greg Miller and Gamespot’s Lucy James replying to someone complaining about phantom icons on the PS5. Turns out I wasn’t alone! Others were suffering from these ghosts of games past. And in that thread, a solution appeared, tweeted by Thomas M Pritchard.
It seemed so stupid. So dumb. So simple, yet so janky. Was this really the solution to my haunted icon? I tried it out and... yup. The icon is gone now. I’m finally, totally free from Assassin’s Creed III Remastered.
Sure, I could have googled around and found a few other folks sharing this method for fixing the problem. But also, why is this a problem? I swear my PS5 continues to fight me on even the simplest things. And earlier this month, the front USB port just stopped working. It’s not great that each time I turn on this new console I worry about what annoying problem or glitch awaits me next.
But at least I solved my ghost problem. And maybe you too will now be able to clear up your PS5 dashboard.
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