As far as news in MLB The Show 26 was concerned, August 22 was a rare busy day. Sony opted to make a late-season change to Mods, in an attempt to entice players to use Silver & Gold Mods. But aside from that, Sony cracked down on those who purchased currency from third-party sellers.

Sony cracks down on Stub purchases

Players on social media, including content creators, were hit with three-year bans for reported use of marketplace manipulation. This news comes amidst content creators promoting third-party sellers of Stubs, used to buy in-game products within Diamond Dynasty, and bots that’ve popped up within the marketplace throughout the year.

Third-party stub sellers have been omnipresent for well over a decade in various card-collecting game (CCG) modes, which has resulted in ban waves across those games. As a matter of fact, third-party currency sellers pushed 2K to remove the marketplace altogether for NBA 2K24. However, that change was ultimately reverted.

However, the developers make clear that doing this is in violation of the Terms of Service. Anyone who logs in agrees to the terms that, per the Sony website, cover “selling or buying in-game currency for real world money.”

This is in line with the Terms of Service for other major sports games that have a CCG mode.

PXP Mods tweaked

Back in March, when MLB The Show 26 released, Diamond Dynasty introduced mods that let players customize Parallel boosts by choosing a specific archetype (Contact, Power, Fielding, etc.) and emphasizing those. On August 22, Sony released modifications to the current system.

In a dev blog, the Sony team indicated that it received feedback indicating that Silver & Gold Parallel Mods, which were obtained in the II-IV ranges, were not useful enough. To encourage players to use them, as opposed to electing for the blanket +2 to +4 attribute boost, MLB The Show 26 buffed some Silver & Gold Mods for both pitching & hitting.

Some of these changes are minor in nature. For example, the Gold Contact-Power Mod only boosts the Contact & Vision stats by just one point. The Gold Power-based Mods, meanwhile, saw a reciprocal +1 Power jump as well.

However, the development team only tweaked the boosts, not the requirements.

Check out more of our gaming coverage, including more on the Pipeline content released on August 21.