Press X for Trophies Is a Sad Indictment of PS5, PS4 Today

It’s out of control. I quite like looking through the new releases on the PS Store but it’s a blend of £0.30 Christian shovelware, regular shovelware, more shovelware and trophy-oriented shovelware.

It's an odd problem to have. When the Playstation Stars rewards program launches games like these will be used to boost stats. What will Sony do about it then?

The PSN store is an absolute mess right now and I can only imagine how indie devs must be feeling who actually put a lot of hard work and money into their games

I have limited play time and wouldn’t even waste one minute acquiring a trophies for some CRAP game I could care less about and the clowns that do should feel ashamed by padding theirs with such rubbish, QUALITY over QUANTITY!!!

They Need Better Quality Control.

The switch doesn't have achievements / trophies but that doesn't stop the eshop from being shovelware central lol

It just seems to me Push in on pointless negativity roll these days. Some games are easy trophies. Aarrrrfgh outrageous 😅

As with most things in life, a little curation often goes a long way.

And yet they don't allow deleting trophies on games you've tried and don't want to go further with (some hit you with trophies just fer loading the damn thing) or probably the new PS platinum trials (no demos for peasants now)
Yet they still allow this which totally skews normal statistics.

I don't know that I would call this problematic. But it's certainly strange that the PS Store, eShop, and Xbox Marketplace are all drowning in weird, cheap crap.

I think it's great that small — SMALL — developers have access to the same platform as AAA-pumping corporations. Unfortunately, this is the bad side of it, and the bad side is prolific.

I don't understand why anyone would want these kinda Platinums, they taint the whole trophy list.

Some of the upcoming games from this developer:

Press square for trophies
Press triangle for trophies
Press L3 for trophies
Press R1 for trophies

@RoomWithaMoose it's problematic because this practice wouldn't be acceptable for real games, so why is it ok for small "devs"? Suppose Uncharted came out. Then next week was Runcharted which is exactly the same game but Drake's in a red shirt. Then next week was Buncharted, now with a blue shirt. Then next week was Puncharted, showing off his pink shirt. These aren't cosmetic DLCs or game updates, by the way, every one would be a separate full price game.

You need a calm and measured response. You don't have to buy them. Yadda yadda.

Xbox Store has fake god of war and spider man games at least Sony ain’t allowing fake halo or gears games onto they’re Storefront

This is precisely why I stopped caring about my trophy level. What's the point going for the difficult and fun games to platinum of someone can just beat my level by stacking their profile with cars, Hannah Montana and this trophy clicker stuff?

Just let them have these meaningless digital victories.

I fail to see how this is even a problem. If someone want to buy a bunch of meaningless trophies, let them.

It has no meaningful impact on anyone other than the person doing it.

PS store is living through what Steam was back in greenlight era. We talking 2013-2015

"Curation" sounds nice until you inevitably realize that most games have some redeeming value, and so you're just asking for someone else to substitute their own judgment for your own. The inevitable result is that a LOT of worthwhile but relatively unknown indies will be sacrificed in the process.

And even when there is curation, crap can still get through. A stricter content policy won't stop stuff like Life of Black Tiger or Vroom in the Night Sky from getting onto these storefronts.

Success attracts opportunism, unfortunately. One of the signs of a successful platform is that a lot of shovelware inevitably winds up on it.

I don't disagree that content discovery tools on storefronts like PSN and the Nintendo eshop should probably be improved (they could take some notes from Steam, in this regard, as a simple tagging feature, with the option to blacklist certain tags, filters out a lot of the crap, in my experience), but, at the end of the day, I'm a big believer in a live and let live policy regarding content you're not interested in. Obviously this trophy fetishism appeals to a lot of people. Let them have their fun. I just think the platforms should be making it easier to filter that stuff out if you're not in that niche.

@nessisonett There will never be enough christian shovelware until I can get a platinum trophy for Super 3D Noah's Ark. It'll all be worth it!

Unsurprisingly as a lot entitled kids don't like the grind or any hard work and often cheat on hard games, so making trophies easy to get

All the indie and shovelware games should be put in their own sections of the store separate from everything else.

Should have a seperate section on the store so you can just see the big new AAA games then one for indies that look good & then one for crap like alarm clock or whatever lol

It goofy and stupid but they wouldn't make these if people didn't buy it so...🤷‍♂️

@Ralizah At least that game is good fun though! I’d kill for Super Noah’s Ark 3D and Chex Quest on PS5 😂

@nessisonett Seems kinda weird that Chex Quest is on Nintendo Switch, but not on literally any other console.

@Gloamin "I'd say the problem is more the fact they clog up the store and detract from other smaller games that release alongside them."

I agree. Arguably the #1 issue on modern console storefronts is worthwhile independent content getting lost under a pile of Press X for Trophy/My Name is Sandwich/Hentai Puzzle-sorta games. Which is why I think some sort of tagging system is imperative, so you can filter out stuff like that.

Or, if absolutely nothing else, add the option to maintain a games blacklist on PSN that you can add individual games or games from the same publisher to.

This is a problem on every single store front. Steam, Nintendo, Xbox etc. are all flooded with these trash games. So far none of them have figured out a solution. Nintendo Eshop and Steam are especially bad.

@ATaco let’s be honest here, it’s not a trophy unless it’s physically adorning your mantelpiece. My PS trophy count is completely incidental I don’t go for those things

This doesn’t bother me really but they kinda ruined the trophy system when they changed the levels a few years ago.

I can't see Sony doing anything about this, especially when there making money from these easy Platinum Trophy games being sold.

100% agree. They should get their own section for shovelware and that’s it. Stop cluttering the PS Deals with less then 1 hour platinums. It’s so hard to actually search through the deals lists with so many shovelware titles on it. They’re clear cash grab games for obsessed trophy hunters who fall for the easy bait of a platinum trophy. I trophy hunt for games I like but I’ve never bought a cheap $1 game seeking a fast platinum. That’s not the fun of trophy hunting. I don’t think Sony can completely eliminate shovelware titles being added because it makes them some money. Having a designated section could help. But, that’d mean Sony has to do the work and determine if a game fits that criteria or not which I doubt they’d want to do

Don't buy those games. Problem solved But please do something on the search list!!
But Nintendo, Xbox and steam are also loaded with this trash. So its not only Sony here.

I was hoping there'd be an expose about how/why crappy games like Life of Black Tiger, Flowers are dead, heck even Abandoned, got signal boosted by official PlayStation blogs and YouTube channel videos

I view the trophies as a personal reference to the games I played to the games I mastered. I really don’t care for shovel ware, but you know what, I’m free to not buy it.
I don’t ever compare my trophies to other people so I don’t really see why people even car.

Q: "Why doesn't sony do a better job of what's allowed, etc"
A: Money. Sony makes money for everything sold, shyte or not. If it's something, that's not even close to a litigious problem, why would sony bother. Sony/ms/nin don't care about gamers "plight" of clusterfcuk storefronts.

It’s not just a Sony thing they were just the last it happened to. Nintendo with switch has been absolutely buried with shovelware for years now and MS has had their problems too. I’m of the mind that it doesn’t bother me I’m informed enough to know what I want when I go on the psn store and if there’s people out there that pay for these “games” for the easy trophies more power to them it isn’t none of my business.

I'm a longtime trophy lover with a good number of platinums, but I don't take them too seriously (like the people who strategically plan to get milestone trophies like a 100th platinum with a specific game).

As soon as I see a a piece-of-garbage platinum for something like this or My Name Is Mayo on someone's trophy list, that person's credibility as a trophy hunter (which, let's face it, means very little as it is) is gone. I love those trophy dings as much as anybody, but I've never gotten why so many people buy games they know are bad just to pad their trophy numbers. It's embarrassing.

@TommyNL except just ignoring them hurts legitimate indie devs too. When you scroll through the games list it can be difficult to tell from just the icons, so you err on the side of it being garbageware or even you just accidentally scroll past the real games because they're completely surrounded by garbage. And so that legit indie dev has lost a potential sale.

@Ralizah I would prefer Sony to be a bit more judicious in what they sell. All stores, physical and digital, exercise control over what they carry, and their product and marketing managers do indeed make those decisions for you. But having to wade through oceans of crap makes for a tedious user experience and makes the store look bad. I’m not looking for Saks Fifth Avenue, but I’d prefer more curation than the digital flea market we have now.

I don't know why they are even on the store, it's not like Sony gains anything from having them on the store when they sell for something like £0.30p. they need better quality control, simple as that. This will likely give all indie games a bad look in the end.

And takes away discoverability for other games. Sony is about quality and should prevent these games from releasing on the platform

@Milktastrophe Press L3 for Trophies would legit be the most challenging.

So pathetic. These consumers need to get a life.

I was just thinking about shovelware when I saw Pickle Run for PS5. I remember shovelware let to the Atari 2600 video game crash…but this generation has so many good games, I don’t think a crash will happen. But yup - there’s a bunch of crap games…I never even thought of the easy trophy angle. I play for fun, trophies are cool bonuses…but not my obsession

Sony should just have a trash section on psn, and a games worth playing section.

I imagine an easy temporary fix would be to have a filter for these "games" under £1. It's seems like these fluff trophy games are all sold for pennies, so you could remove them with that one filter.

Personally though, trophies or achievements are only ever something I bother with, if I really like a game and want to extend my time with it. However if they have stuff tied to various difficulty levels or online trophies, I don't bother. While I've occasionally replayed games at harder difficulties (eg. HZD and it's 'Ultra Hard' mode), it's the exception, as I find higher difficulties usually just turn enemies into bullet sponges.

Funny how Xbox GamePass/Marketplace has the same 1000g garbage, but somehow Sony is the only one with this problem...

https://www.trueachievements.com/n41688/xbox-game-pass-easy-achievements

Nintendo and Sonys stores are awful for this with Nintendos being the worst to be honest

@TommyNL problem is that these games take next to nothing to make so these "devs" are able to just pump them out without much investment or risk at all. If even just a couple people pick it up it'll turn a profit for them.

There are alot of these little types of games on the store, but it’s never been an issue for me because I always know what I’m looking for if I’m on the store and I’ll just search for it.

I guess if you are someone who just randomly feels like browsing the pages of the store because they want to buy something but they don’t know what that is, I could see it being an annoyance.

@nessisonett what can I imagine under £0.30 Christian shovelware? Never saw anything like that?

@DaveSimonH in the Nintendo eshop I did find some fantastic games going for under 1£/€ on sale, but yes, most of what you find at that price point is crap.

Do people actually still care about Trophies?

Wow ok.. nice guys👍

I completely agree. Sony needs to put a stop to these game, but this Jim Ryan led Sony won't. They only care about profits. I will say this about these titles those. I've all but stopped even looking at titles to buy on PS Store just because I have to weed through this trash.

Not surpising when many people here seem more obsessed with getting trophies than enjoying the games they buy.

If you actually care about trophies, then why would you get these?

You might as well buy medals on Ebay, if you are that pathetic..

@Ps1toPSPlus all of these games have like 6 to 10+ trophy stacks for different consoles and regions. It's pretty rare for Xbox games to have multiple stacks, so this problem is much worse on PS.

Let me rephrase my previous comments in a more constructive way..i see these games as insignificant and as much as i dislike them as much as everybody else they dont wreak complete havock on my gaming..they dont even pop up on the store unless i'm activley looking for them as they never appear in the sales or deals sections where i mainly look..i dont think there is a need to link them to any particular community either (not pushsquare this time.) I also personally think that another article highlighting this genre of games is really unecessary and just gives them more attention than they deserve..i hope this was more constructive 👍

I can’t blame any developer for jumping on this and trying to make some money from ‘trophy hunters’.

I’d say this highlights a bigger problem within the gaming community, the obsession with Achievements/Trophies. Like anything trophies can be fun to try and obtain but I also think it can be a really unhealthy trap to fall into. Anyone buying games like this I’d argue has fell into an unhealthy obsession.

I’m sure Sony could do more to moderate their storefront but don’t think they will while they’re making good money but maybe here the problem isn’t the game but gamers themselves.

I wish they would get rid of trophies and achievements in games. It's a dumb novelty from 2005 that needs to go away. It wasn't cute when it first came out and it overstayed its welcome by over a decade.

So the problem here are the platinum trophies I guess and not the games themselves. So we have an ego problem from gamers they play only AAA games and want to show what they are capable with trophies. I personally don't give a f@ck how may trophies someone has, never been a trophie hunter so this isn't an issue for me. If someone wants to pay for easy trophies then it's his problem not mine. But even then I see some hypocrisy from the other side when the majority of the gamers to achieve platinum trophies spends time on youtube walkthroughs. I mean, I see "cheaters" on both sides here, don't mind me.

I hope it's got some insane trophy like Press X 10,000,000 times to catch people unaware.

@Arxagelos
Nah it’s just fabricated outrage. Can make that sort of coverage about a lot of things. The press point the finger at something blowing it out of proportion and it becomes a huge dark spot amplifying some slightly annoyed feeling about nothingness.
Instead of properly covering Bitsummit and make people happy with positivity you know. 🤷🏻

I want to give my actual opinion here for the people blaming trophies or trophy hunters for this problem. It is not their fault.

These easy plat games serve the same purpose as microtransactions. Companies have seen an easy way to deliver quick and easy (and addictable) dopamine hits while delivering very little in the way of quality content. It's psychological manipulation of people's brains to get their money.

Doesn't matter if it's a big publisher delivering their brand new AAA live service game that lets you have buy colours or a hat for your avatar, or a small organisation that is making cheap and easy games, they give out trophies for little effort. Both are in the business of pumping out lower quality content at small costs in each instance, but that hit that 'feels good' and encourage more spending on that content long term.

And big companies like Sony, they are moving in to live service, looking at NFTs, and allowing poor content, because it brings in money.

If you are upset about this, then you have to be upset about it all. If you are ok with the other stuff, then being angry about this much smaller problem is baffling. Since the only difference between this and what EA, 2K, Sony, MS, and the other big players do, is the fact that this is being done by small companies. Which makes the line drawn appear to be one of big business simping.

@JJ2 careful dude..in the spirit of being constructive i feel i should help you be a better commentor and point out your comment may be deemed unconstructive by the few..

Garbage is rampant on every storefront, if you think the psn has a store front full of garbage it's still nothing compared to Steam. Xbox and Switch is just as bad in case you didn't notice. It's become a nightmare for me to find anything on Switch. Fact of the matter is, there is so many products with limited moderators so this is an issue I don't see going away anytime soon.

I don't get platinum hunting myself, it's not why I enjoy gaming. But it's fair enough if you do enjoy that aspect of gaming, and like doing the checklists for trophies with 100% completion, and I know a lot of people really do love it.

But I understand these "games" even less. Who buys them? Is it exploiting an addiction? What is the point? Seriously

@get2sammyb Who actually gives final say on trophies and how they function within games? Is it purely a developer function? Could it be policed so certain games can't have any trophies activated? I genuinely don't know how they are implemented, but could there be a way for games to have trophies shut down, or not allowed unless certain criteria are met?

I only know press X to Cancel in Japanese PlayStation button configuration.

Sony: “Hey look, even sh*t gets sold on the Switch's eShop. Let’s allow shovelware, too!” 🙄

Is this really a problem? I don't honestly care if other people buy dirt cheap games to get easy trophies. If that fills their cups, well, cool? It's one of those things that doesn't effect me in the slightest. Sure they inflate their trophy level but ... meh? I don't think most people really use that as any sort of actual gamer cred measuring stick.

I can still find the games I'm looking for on PSN. Sure I think the store could be better organized - it's kind of insane trying to browse sales that have literally thousands of games, but I think that is an issue that can be remedied with better tools and organization.

did someone said....a cash grab!?

@tameshiyaku There’s a new one every single time the store updates. They’re usually called something bizarre with an MS Paint logo and have a banner saying Breakthrough Gaming. They’re pretty much the bottom of the barrel.

Another cheerful article from Sammy. Give someone else a go.

@Bentleyma Well, it's a start! 🙏🙈

@get2sammyb If Playstation Stars gives you PS store credit for getting Platinums then the situation will get a lot worse as people would buy these types of games to gain PS store credit worth more than the price of the games themselves.

@Ravix For me its fun to get because i loved the game and had fun getting it besides that not much.

Happened to me over the weekend. I saw this already cheap game from 3.99 to I think 2.50 on recent PS store sales called Concept Destruction. On the surface it looked a really fun time bashing other cars in arenas. It was only when I started it and saw the Ratalaika logo and thought oh no not this crap again. Took me under an hour to get all the trophies and just wanted it to end quick by the end. Not as bad as pressing just one button like mayo or other food on a table games but still a waist of an hour and 2.50

They need to just make a section of the PS Store dedicated for these easy trophy games.
I don't have a problem with them existing, if people want to spend their money on those garbage games then that's their choice.
I do have a problem with these games littering the store front and making it hard to find actual good indies.

@RoomWithaMoose eShop for sure but Xbox not so much.

@Ps1toPSPlus there’s easy and then there’s press x for trophies easy

Wow, I thought Sony was in a race to become Nintendo with their policies, but I never thought they actually wanted PS Store to become the eShop.....

I will never understand the obsession with trophies to begin with, but ever beyond the trophy thing, it's just the whole "app store shovelware on consoles" thing that's a mess.

I know some dislike "curation" but to a degree, isn't curation the single selling point of a walled garden ecosystem? The Nintendo Seal of Quality (and, originally all the policies of limiting the games that each publisher could produce on the system) was designed around curating their platform to specifically prevent the shovelware avalanche that killed Atari and the games industry as a whole in the US. The whole industry failed once for this very reason, and the idea of curation is what made "video games" not a dirty word to US retailers.

Beyond that, the thought of curation and a certain content image is why many might choose Nintendo, or PS, or Xbox specifically. Otherwise what's the difference between console and PC? Some stuff gets lost, sure, but you buy into the platform for the idea of a curated landscape. Even if they left the garbage games "on the store" and simply had a spotlight separating "games that don't suck" and "pure garbage we're willing to take your money for anyway", helps. At this point none of the stores are worth really browsing, and just knowing what you want before you get there and specifically searching for it is the only way it's useful rendering the store kind of useless. It's more sensible to check what's on Plus/Game Pass and just let the curation there tell you what's good.

@Royalblues It's waaaaay worse than the Wii shovelware days. That stuff still had a budget behind it, it was something worth enough to have a physical print, and take up shelf space in games and electronics stores. That stuff, bad as it was, was 1000% better than this App Store $0.50 garbage that's now on consoles. I agree ,though, Nintendo started it. They took an android tablet and pushed a minimum app volume with no restrictions.....what they got was the Google Play Store....and we shouldn't be surprised. And then the cash cow was open.

I thought the internet was the worst thing that could happen to humanity, but then the smartphone was invented. Smart Phones for Stupid People(TM)

@TrickyDicky99
They begrudgingly allowed deleting of trophies at 0% for people who wanted an accurate record of their gaming, had looked at a game and decided that it wasn't for them.
But some games have trophies that ping just for starting the game, and then if you don't want to play further into the game if you don't like it, you're stuck with it showing 1% or whatever.
It brings down the grade average on things like PS profiles for those of us who care about such things.

@Bamila Did Valve address the issue and what measures did they take to fix the problem?

@Northern_munkey
No worries. Your own comment again is discussing what we are not allowed to discuss here and since I’m referring to it it’s a catch 22 and it’s getting ridiculous here Haha
Anyway I’m no drama queen but just saying my honest thoughts.
😅
Anyway when I go to the store I usually have an idea of what I’m looking for and people just searching random stuff then they get what they want. Random stuff. I don’t see anything wrong and better focus of gaming positivity when there’s so much misery in the world who can’t afford gaming. 😕
You know what a lot of people complain about Twitter but I’m fortunate I use it because for instance seeing posts from Shu and Greg Rice gives me good positive vibes about gaming that we don’t get here and that’s what gaming is about.

If you are gaming for trophies you are doing it wrong. If you think trophies mean anything you have been misinformed. They are there strickly to keep you on the game, i guess so you can brag to other people that care about trophies.

The only way I see right now to filter this crap is by price. I filter everything below $5 to not show up. Not perfect but helps...

I personally couldn't care less about trophies, such a pointless addition to gaming IMO but some people get proper worked up about them so fair enough.

If people want to buy these and there is some sort of market for them, I'm sure Sony is happy to keep them there and take there, albeit small, cut.

Can't see how it really harms anyone them being there.

Not sure why my name is mayo gets a pass, that was clearly the start of this nonsense.
I still like trophies though, they are a fun thing to aim for in a game. It just means that (ahem) size doesnt matter anymore.
A 1.6% rarity platinum is infinitely more notable than a hundred of these nonsense ones.

For me price, under $5, is a quick filter along with any screen shots or video provided.

To each their own. Spend $60 for one game where a platinum is of little or no priority, or $60 for 15 or more easy platinums? To each their own.

Overall I like trophies if I like the game as trophies can add challenges I may enjoy. Trophies also provide my game history along with providing feedback to game developers. Viewing other players list is interesting and can reveal platinum quality over quantity.

@Milktastrophe Push L3 is their Dark Souls

These games have really urked me, I don't care that much about trophies but seeing the storefront littered with this crap is so disheartening when looking for new games.

PSNProfiles is an absolute disaster and you aren't even allowed to complain about these games on there. All posts showing distain for these titles gets deleted.

@Dudditz09 imagine spending all that money on a new PS5, you go to the ps store and see an absolute avalache of exciting new titles like 'Pickle Run' and 'Jumping Noodles' or 'Jumping Noodles Turbo'.

It's only getting worse and worse. Serious Trophy hunters feel the need to buy everyone of these to keep up on PSNProfiles type leaderboards. As such more and more and more of these games are coming out.

It might feel easy to ignore but it's still a huge problem on so many levels. I mean these games are literally feeding off people's addictions to trophies.

To this day, achievement systems are still useless.

PushSquare: "Guys, we really need to talk about the PS store's downward spiral into Pavlovian trophy hell."
Game dev: "Ok, I'm going to start a conversation around this by insurgently using the medium itself to tell a satirical story about it."
PushSquare: "Can you believe the nerve of this guy? Burn 'im at the stake, he's a witch, Harry! Blarglgarblblah!"

It used to be getting platinum trophies for the most part meant something. Even if the games were relatively easy they used to have a 20 or 30 hour single player campaign to get through. Now getting more platinum trophies than others is more down to having a lot of money to be able to buy all of these cheap games and there are people who only play games like these and never anything of any kind of substance or challenge. Personally I think Sony needs to change its criteria for what is allowed to have a platinum trophy attached to it. It is also causing a huge addiction for some trying to climb leader boards simply by paying for all these games.

@TrickyDicky99
Well you can't opt out of them, so might as well get something worthwhile out of it.
The person with ocd would probably play the game they didn't like to get 100% of the trophies.😁

I must admit I love my trophies but platinums that require you to do nothing are just ridiculous same with deliberate duplicates. This issue with shovelware is so annoying store looks a complete mess with some good games getting swarmed by crap

The Playstation Store is overrun with cheap games and it's devaluing the brand.

im literally spending a few hours getting an achievement on 'The Evil Within', and some scrub has a platinum after playing a game for 10 minutes!! Yeah, I see profiles with these easy platinums and it makes me want to vomit.. Due to "trophy boosting" this crap is flooding the ps store.. "My platinum is NOTHING like your platinum ! Please move on!"

@Kairu We live in a world, where people arent what they are. Look at people that base their worth on surgical enhancements, buying modded controllers so they can win at a video game, or cheat on a test to get into college. The world is full of fake people, with fake desires and fake personalities. We asked for it, we got it...

Simple fix: Do not buy. Do not complain.