[baud147258]

I've been hearing the term since Unity made easy (easier?) to create low effort assets flips.

[AdmiralAsshat]

It's much older than that. We'd call low-effort licensed games from no-name companies that were primarily designed to trick Grandma at Christmas "shovelware" as far back as the GC/PS2/XBX era, and that's just as far as I can remember seeing it in print.

[pjmlp]

Even older than that, they are the root cause of 1983 games crash on the US market, and why Nintendo's approach to a walled garden was welcomed with open arms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983