Playstation 4 8.50 Beta 2.00

[kouen2010]

I will miss my platinum hunting community :'(

[StraightVege]

While it's true that communities were ridden with spam and toxicity, they did come in handy on several occasions for boosting, and I'm generally not a fan of removing features. I'm in no hurry to install this firmware.

[DAKHNl]

Playstation Communities app was the most convenient of things, ever. Even discord doesn’t compare. 
 

That was taken down a few many months ago and now this

 

Maybe they’ll integrate it into the new but super laggy PS App, hopefully

[Dry]

In the past I’ve made silly mistakes with my first account but communities is what ultimately got it permanently banned, very soon after I started using Reddit and then created this PSN account to carefully start over. Months later Sony discontinued the communities app which killed any and all interest for this feature because (in my opinion) browsing communities on the console is not only inferior UI-wise but a complete waste of gaming time versus viewing my communities on the go using my phone on public transport and stuff.

 

Say what you want about Reddit, but it’s superior to PS4 communities in so many ways. My biggest reason for me given the first sentence, is the Terms Of Service. I believe Reddit will never be perfect but there’s a lot more freedom allowed there then there is on PlayStation, a lot of the rules put in place are made for individual communities (Subreddits) in addition to the platform-wide guidelines which aren’t always important. Unless you royally fuck up or you’re committed to dangerous content/groups, getting an entire reddit user banned is difficult and if that does happen, it’s just Reddit. Getting removed from PSN however is a bigger issue, you’ve lost your social ability along with your online access and if you’re bad enough you’re entire console will be blocked. “An All-Digital Media World sounds great, wouldn’t you agree?”

 

To me Reddit can be a great community/forum network. My one piece of advice for both new and existing users is to avoid political subreddits, such places can be incredibly toxic and the anxiety (especially for the past 12 months now) is not worth it. Cringe/Normie Meme pages are also terrible, keep back from these too.

 

Farewell PS4 communities, you were the source of much trouble for me and personally will not be missed.

[DAKHNl]

6 minutes ago, Miles Vanilla said:

In the past I’ve made silly mistakes with my first account but communities is what ultimately got it permanently banned, very soon after I started using Reddit and then created this PSN account to carefully start over. Months later Sony discontinued the communities app which killed any and all interest for this feature because (in my opinion) browsing communities on the console is not only inferior UI-wise but a complete waste of gaming time versus viewing my communities on the go using my phone on public transport and stuff.

 

Say what you want about Reddit, but it’s superior to PS4 communities in so many ways. My biggest reason for me given the first sentence, is the Terms Of Service. I believe Reddit will never be perfect but there’s a lot more freedom allowed there then there is on PlayStation, a lot of the rules put in place are made for individual communities (Subreddits) in addition to the platform-wide guidelines which aren’t always important. Unless you royally fuck up or you’re committed to dangerous content/groups, getting an entire reddit user banned is difficult and if that does happen, it’s just Reddit. Getting removed from PSN however is a bigger issue, you’ve lost your social ability along with your online access and if you’re bad enough you’re entire console will be blocked. “An All-Digital Media World sounds great, wouldn’t you agree?”

 

To me Reddit can be a great community/forum network. My one piece of advice for both new and existing users is to avoid political subreddits, such places can be incredibly toxic and the anxiety (especially for the past 12 months now) is not worth it. Cringe/Normie Meme pages are also terrible, keep back from these too.

 

Farewell PS4 communities, you were the source of much trouble for me and personally will not be missed.

I’ve seen people post nsfw content on very large communities and nothing happened to them lol, and it wasn’t even sexy more like eww stuff lol. 
 

yeah always use a throwaway alt, I have lil cousins who play so I got lucky before I learnt about suspensions and stuff coz I always used their acc to communicate 

 

Honestly Sony T & C keeps it clean and humble unlike Xbox and people got everything to lose on psn if not communicating on alts (which is why I always only do group party chats no solo DM) 

 

psnp discord server itself has better prospects than Reddit, the private boosting channels need some work 30 mins before is redundant really and permanent auto game channels for every game you own would be really cool too easy way to get boosters (with the option to hide it of course, once you’re done with the game) 

[Maxie_M0us3]

Can we finally have Discord built-in PS5? Thank you.

[Dry]

26 minutes ago, Kizznyc said:

I’ve seen people post nsfw content on very large communities and nothing happened to them lol, and it wasn’t even sexy more like eww stuff lol. 
 

yeah always use a throwaway alt, I have lil cousins who play so I got lucky before I learnt about suspensions and stuff coz I always used their acc to communicate 

 

Honestly Sony T & C keeps it clean and humble unlike Xbox and people got everything to lose on psn if not communicating on alts (which is why I always only do group party chats no solo DM) 

 

psnp discord server itself has better prospects than Reddit, the private boosting channels need some work 30 mins before is redundant really and permanent auto game channels for every game you own would be really cool too easy way to get boosters (with the option to hide it of course, once you’re done with the game) 

Great idea, IF social platforms like PS4 communities were to continue existing. I recall those “From The Hub” accounts being a big nuisance from back before. The fact some of these offenders get away with worse than what I’ve done messes with me quite a bit. Ah well, doesn’t matter now because my ban was well over a year ago and these abusers are about to have one less option to break Sony’s terms.

 

As for Discord, I don’t ever use my profile unless necessary for trophy boosting. From what I’ve seen the PSNP channel looks great. Currently you can link an Xbox Gamertag with your Discord Tag. Hopefully the same can be done with PSN unless Microsoft agree to an exclusive contract for console profiles.

Edited March 5, 2021 by Miles Vanilla

[DAKHNl]

2 hours ago, MaxieM0us3 said:

Can we finally have Discord built-in PS5? Thank you.

It will never happen due to the toxicity and politics etc of Discord. In a way glad it never will.
 

Sony is globalised Playstation community whereas Xbox community is mainly North America and Anglo sphere focused some parts of Western Europe too maybe... and sad to say very racist and bigoted, which is why people don’t buy it outside those regions much and discord is simply an extension of that experience. 

 

Sony has the long term vision of preventing cultural hegemony and evils that psn-discord link can breed and rightly refused to do it and hopefully never do it even for a few big bucks 

[OmegaRejectz]

21 hours ago, Kizznyc said:

Playstation Communities app was the most convenient of things, ever. Even discord doesn’t compare. 
 

That was taken down a few many months ago and now this

 

Maybe they’ll integrate it into the new but super laggy PS App, hopefully

How? The only thing I can think is that it's a PS account so if you're creating a session you'd just be adding names, but the communties feature was beyond bare bones & was so poorly implemented. I won't miss this removal for even a second. Plus every PS app I've used has been a buggy POS, and I don't see why the communities app would've been any different. Discord actually works. When you send a message they actual recieve it in real time, you aren't refreshing the app 20 times, entering and reentering the chat room & having a hard time seeing what date and time messages were sent.

15 hours ago, Kizznyc said:

It will never happen due to the toxicity and politics etc of Discord. In a way glad it never will.
 

Sony is globalised Playstation community whereas Xbox community is mainly North America and Anglo sphere focused some parts of Western Europe too maybe... and sad to say very racist and bigoted, which is why people don’t buy it outside those regions much and discord is simply an extension of that experience. 

 

Sony has the long term vision of preventing cultural hegemony and evils that psn-discord link can breed and rightly refused to do it and hopefully never do it even for a few big bucks 

Ah yes, if it's the West it's racist and bigoted. If you simply censor everything (e.g. nudity in games, like Sony's doing) you'll be protecting the kids. C'mon guys, do it for the kids!
 

People wouldn't be pushing for features like Discord if Sony stopped making garbage software (PS App, PlayStation Store "Revamp", communities, and the large suit of other garbage PS apps that have since been removed) Don't see how requiring several slow, barely functioning apps to send messages and view their PS Store is better than Discord integration.

[DAKHNl]

1 minute ago, OmegaRejectz said:

How? The only thing I can think is that it's a PS account so if you're creating a session you'd just be adding names, but the communties feature was beyond bare bones & was so poorly implemented. I won't miss this removal for even a second. Plus every PS app I've used has been a buggy POS, and I don't see why the communities app would've been any different. Discord actually works. When you send a message they actual recieve it in real time, you aren't refreshing the app 20 times, entering and reentering the chat room & having a hard time seeing what date and time messages were sent.

Had a real problem with ps app today, it had too much lag and wouldn’t even connect to vc, couldn’t read new messages. 

 

The boosting session went fritz, name calling nastiness this and that and we never got another match started after we switched from discord to ps app for the convenience of the two players who wouldn’t or blatantly refused to get discord (we were 6 on discord, 2 left for work/sleep so we needed 2 more to boost) 

 

But strangely this was coming off discord same day same hour coz two guys didn’t have discord and they clearly could’ve got it, but we needed the players to start match. Sometimes stubbornness and brand loyalty is bad to successful boosts so I totally agree with you 

 

As for the updates, the biggest bad one was the voice chat moderation and report enabling.

 

There are some jokers around, probably Xbox players whose sole purpose on psn is to see Playstation only long term players get suspended or banned like they did to our guy @Miles Vanilla as their experience shows. Xbox players have this lfg thing, even on app which is akin to ps communities so makes sense they go hunting for victims and perhaps this is why Sony is removing it finally 
 

[mcnichoj]

On 3/3/2021 at 5:08 PM, turniplord said:

Those asking why it's being removed - it's moving in-line with the PS5. Instead of adding the feature to the PS5, they're removing it form the PS4. Chances are, when PS5 stock is normal, they'll add a newer version of the communities to the PS5 OS.

Like how they moved PS Home over to the PS4?

Sony just doesn't want to pay people to police it. Probably also server costs because people can upload images.

 

20 hours ago, Miles Vanilla said:

In the past I’ve made silly mistakes with my first account but communities is what ultimately got it permanently banned

You either posted a LOT of porn, gore or bigoted material. That's the only way they would ban your entire account.

[OmegaRejectz]

2 hours ago, Kizznyc said:

Had a real problem with ps app today, it had too much lag and wouldn’t even connect to vc, couldn’t read new messages. 

 

The boosting session went fritz, name calling nastiness this and that and we never got another match started after we switched from discord to ps app for the convenience of the two players who wouldn’t or blatantly refused to get discord (we were 6 on discord, 2 left for work/sleep so we needed 2 more to boost) 

 

But strangely this was coming off discord same day same hour coz two guys didn’t have discord and they clearly could’ve got it, but we needed the players to start match. Sometimes stubbornness and brand loyalty is bad to successful boosts so I totally agree with you 

 

As for the updates, the biggest bad one was the voice chat moderation and report enabling.

 

There are some jokers around, probably Xbox players whose sole purpose on psn is to see Playstation only long term players get suspended or banned like they did to our guy @Miles Vanilla as their experience shows. Xbox players have this lfg thing, even on app which is akin to ps communities so makes sense they go hunting for victims and perhaps this is why Sony is removing it finally 
 

I'm extremely confused by your response. It's like you're agreeing with me, but at the same time are randomly saying random things that aren't related...

[DAKHNl]

41 minutes ago, OmegaRejectz said:

I'm extremely confused by your response. It's like you're agreeing with me, but at the same time are randomly saying random things that aren't related...

They are all definitely related, once if you ever experience you’ll realise 

[OmegaRejectz]

5 hours ago, Kizznyc said:

They are all definitely related, once if you ever experience you’ll realise 

I’m just confused why there’s the Xbox hate? Like... I really don’t see how you came to your conclusion. Nor do I understand what you’re trying to convey.

[Carol]

I belonged to some communities, but they were always pretty useless for me, to be honest. I rarely checked them, so I definitely won’t miss them. For me, the only community that interests me is my list of PSN friends.

[Katt]

So, they are building the coffin to bury the PS4. It's not even April ... It's not like I care much about communities, but it's always one thing removed and nothing added. It's PS Vita again.

[That1Estonian]

2 minutes ago, Katt said:

So, they are building the coffin to bury the PS4. It's not even April ... It's not like I care much about communities, but it's always one thing removed and nothing added. It's PS Vita again.

Nah, they need way more PS5's out there before they can start thinking of that ?

[Dry]

14 hours ago, mcnichoj said:

You either posted a LOT of porn, gore or bigoted material. That's the only way they would ban your entire account.

Back in January 2015 I was still a dumb teenager. I wasn’t mature enough to understand why the way things are on game networks so when trolls were running wild on LittleBigPlanet 3 I thought it would be a great idea to report one of these accounts myself. Through the use of the in-game “Good Grief!” system I submitted a report about a NSFW photo upload but instead got suspended for 30 days. My parents weren’t very impressed with me at the time but were quite mad at Sony’s customer support too. They claimed I was the creator of the images which I directly sent to them (turns out the LBP grief reporting is fundamentally broken) and they can’t send back the said images for my parents to know what I’ve sent. Sony also stated that any future offence would result in a permanent ban, which I completely forgot about until realising once I made a second offence that caused my permanent ban. As for the support workers themselves, not a single person in my family has come across telephone assistance as repugnant as this before and worse has yet to be seen from help with another big company.

 

With my second offence (June 2019) I recall sharing a random ID as I was explaining trophy privacy in a discussion on the public board of a trophy community and was too stupid not to cover up any usernames. I wish I kept the email sent to me with the reason for my ban but it highlighted a sentence in the Terms Of Service that was written in a monetary/fraudulent manner, which I see is BS. Since then I believe the entire PSN Terms Of Service was rewritten as the “Community Code Of Conduct”. So much of these updated guidelines were updated to be simplified and as a result I haven’t since been able to find anything resembling what rule was focused on the email.

Since creating this account I’ve long graduated from school, matured well enough to avoid reporting bad users (because if I don’t, somebody else will) and choose not to interact with public comment/message boards on PSN altogether. Any dumb behaviour from me now is reserved for other networks/services that are big and have less consequences if there’s any misuse by me. I just can’t lose anything more from my PlayStation console, a reason for me to dislike an all-digital media world.

[dieselmanchild]

I just heard about the removal of the communities feature. What the fuck Sony! I don’t understand why every “update” always has to ruin or break something.

 

I’ve been part of various trophy hunting communities over the past couple years and have met tons of people there, enjoyed sharing & viewing platinum screenshots, and really enjoyed the daily discussions amongst other hunters.

 

I’ve also found the PS4 communities to be the fastest, and 2nd best overall method for finding players for trophy help, or multiplayer/co-op tasks. PSNP sessions are obviously #1, but it takes time to form a group. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve needed someone for a quick trophy or task and used the specific game communities on the PS4, and found a partner within minutes.
 

It’s an incredibly useful feature for me and many others and I’m going to miss it. I can’t lie, I am unbelievably fucking pissed at Sony for taking this feature away because there’s seemingly no good explanation for doing it. Doing this to “bring things in line with the PS5” is a horseshit excuse and makes no sense. All it does is take away yet another social feature that hundreds of thousands of people still use on a daily basis. ?

[DAKHNl]

1 hour ago, dieselmanchild said:

I just heard about the removal of the communities feature. What the fuck Sony! I don’t understand why every “update” always has to ruin or break something.

 

I’ve been part of various trophy hunting communities over the past couple years and have met tons of people there, enjoyed sharing & viewing platinum screenshots, and really enjoyed the daily discussions amongst other hunters.

 

I’ve also found the PS4 communities to be the fastest, and 2nd best overall method for finding players for trophy help, or multiplayer/co-op tasks. PSNP sessions are obviously #1, but it takes time to form a group. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve needed someone for a quick trophy or task and used the specific game communities on the PS4, and found a partner within minutes.
 

It’s an incredibly useful feature for me and many others and I’m going to miss it. I can’t lie, I am unbelievably fucking pissed at Sony for taking this feature away because there’s seemingly no good explanation for doing it. Doing this to “bring things in line with the PS5” is a horseshit excuse and makes no sense. All it does is take away yet another social feature that hundreds of thousands of people still use on a daily basis.

Although it was a nice feature mostly, but typing from controller and navigation lol c’mon! The app discontinued should’ve made people angry not this 

18 hours ago, OmegaRejectz said:

I’m just confused why there’s the Xbox hate? Like... I really don’t see how you came to your conclusion. Nor do I understand what you’re trying to convey.

It’s very simple, Sony trying to be strict and heavily moderate makes easy victim hunting for those who want to abuse Playstation Safety, and most likely they are coming from Xbox otherwise why would they want to boot accounts off psn coz more players is always good for the community, and for Sony sales too... it’s coz they want people to hate Sony after a suspension or ban and ‘Switch’ over to Xbox (coz there it’s only comm bans and mostly temporary, u don’t lose purchases(big deal), trophies, save progress backup saves, files ps plus etc

 

this is what is meant by saying Sony is making the right move here 

 

They have the vision and understanding to see this happening and rightly remove the communities feature finally.... Good corporate decision indeed 

[DAKHNl]

On 6/3/2021 at 5:09 AM, OmegaRejectz said:

How? The only thing I can think is that it's a PS account so if you're creating a session you'd just be adding names, but the communties feature was beyond bare bones & was so poorly implemented. I won't miss this removal for even a second. Plus every PS app I've used has been a buggy POS, and I don't see why the communities app would've been any different. Discord actually works. When you send a message they actual recieve it in real time, you aren't refreshing the app 20 times, entering and reentering the chat room & having a hard time seeing what date and time messages were sent.

Ah yes, if it's the West it's racist and bigoted. If you simply censor everything (e.g. nudity in games, like Sony's doing) you'll be protecting the kids. C'mon guys, do it for the kids!
 

People wouldn't be pushing for features like Discord if Sony stopped making garbage software (PS App, PlayStation Store "Revamp", communities, and the large suit of other garbage PS apps that have since been removed) Don't see how requiring several slow, barely functioning apps to send messages and view their PS Store is better than Discord integration.

Yeah that’s true as well. But people can still use Discord, u don’t need to have the psn discord link. 
 

What I mean by racism and cultural hegemony is that in discord mostly is bigoted coz they only allow English(in servers that really matter) giving pathetic lame moderation excuse when they can easily get multi lingual mods. 
 

plus then the this would make it harder to sell Japanese products and culture and also other ones than the Anglosphere ones... coz ps app sucks so bad for such a. Long time everyone will be doing the discord link and be forced to use English (which then would force anglosphere culture) 

 

even psnp here is a good example of this, why do people have to submit to being forced to using one language and one cultural norm of a particular community? 
 

Simply put it’s easier, laziness to find multilingual admins/ create channels, forums in multiple languages and not just that but more important culturally appropriate content optimisation in the other languages etc and the Anglosphere just doesn’t care about the rest of the world. 
 

SONY SEES ALL THIS, AND THEY WANT NONE OF THAT NONSENSE (This is the actual reason, coz there is no other real one, really) 

 

And therefore rightly not integrating discord, and leaving it to people to organise if they want to use discord, coz really what does a discord link to psn do? Just removes one step of asking what’s your discord or server link aka the above mentioned laziness 

[dieselmanchild]

4 hours ago, Kizznyc said:

Although it was a nice feature mostly, but typing from controller and navigation lol c’mon! The app discontinued should’ve made people angry not this 

The app removal did make a lot of people upset, which is actually the only reason I discovered there was a communities app to begin with lol. But people got over it because you could still use the communities for their main functions.
 

A lot of the communities I’m in have already begun trying to move users onto Discord. It’s a nice alternative for now, but it’s not even remotely the same, even if the actual communication is made easier. The problem with Discord is it massively narrows the pool of active users because people only join when they’re interested and go out of their way to find & get invited to a group. Although they were flawed, the brilliance of the PS4 communities was having such an easily accessible, centralized location that anybody could join in a moments notice.

 

All anybody had to do is scroll down on a game on their dashboard to see a list of the most populated communities for that specific game, and you could join it and start posting in one click. I’ve used it for years to get quick multiplayer sessions or quick help/advice in games in a moments notice. It works great and is usually 100x faster than making a group on PSNP and waiting.

 

Anyways... it just sucks for the people who use them. I haven’t been this choked about the removal of a digital social space since IMDB inexplicably removed their message boards in 2017. They took the most centralized movie discussion forum on the internet and destroyed it for no clear reason. 
 

For those who remember, back in the day you could go to the home page for any specific movie or TV show on IMDB and have thoughtful discussions and debates, read production rumours, behind the scenes info that people in the know would post, and all kinds of unique information that made those boards unlike anywhere else on the net. Its been years since the IMDB message boards went down and to this day there is still nothing else on the internet that even vaguely resembles it. ?

 

 

[DAKHNl]

8 minutes ago, dieselmanchild said:

The app removal did make a lot of people upset, which is actually the only reason I discovered there was a communities app to begin with lol. But people got over it because you could still use the communities for their main functions.
 

A lot of the communities I’m in have already begun trying to move users onto Discord. It’s a nice alternative for now, but it’s not even remotely the same, even if the actual communication is made easier. The problem with Discord is it massively narrows the pool of active users because people only join when they’re interested and go out of their way to find & get invited to a group. Although they were flawed, the brilliance of the PS4 communities was having such an easily accessible, centralized location that anybody could join in a moments notice.

 

All anybody had to do is scroll down on a game on their dashboard to see a list of the most populated communities for that specific game, and you could join it and start posting in one click. I’ve used it for years to get quick multiplayer sessions or quick help/advice in games in a moments notice. It works great and is usually 100x faster than making a group on PSNP and waiting.

 

Anyways... it just sucks for the people who use them. I haven’t been this choked about the removal of a digital social space since IMDB inexplicably removed their message boards in 2017. They took the most centralized movie discussion forum on the internet and destroyed it for no clear reason. 
 

For those who remember, back in the day you could go to the home page for any specific movie or TV show on IMDB and have thoughtful discussions and debates, read production rumours, behind the scenes info that people in the know would post, and all kinds of unique information that made those boards unlike anywhere else on the net. Its been years since the IMDB message boards went down and to this day there is still nothing else on the internet that even vaguely resembles it.

 

 

Well I’d say those discussions didn’t really benefit IMDb or it’s members financially speaking. 
 

it’s all business and servers need money to run and so on, only those who truly understand won’t complain. 
 

yes ps communities is way better than psnp even for PS3 it’s just inside the psn ecosystem and one click basically very true. 
 

Well if it really matters, people should start some sort of protest to get it back (perhaps even improved with some extra features than psnp and discord have here) 

 

If there is enough voices SONY has to heed to them or risk losing a lot, but by surmisal it’s just a tiny minority who knew about ps communities much less use it perhaps 5 percent of psn user base at best so any corporation no matter how ethical simply won’t care they want profit and doing charity to 5 percent player base isn’t profit, unfortunately every company needs profit from every aspect. YES EVERY ASPECT (Perhaps it can be a ps plus benefit maybe in future)  which is why they are making tv shows and movies about exclusives instead 

Edited March 7, 2021 by Kizznyc
Ethnical to ethical coz typo

[tinman_1954]

Is Sony actually going to do away with all communities on the PS4? If so, did they give any kind of reason or justification for such an action? Furthermore, how is that going to affect this site? Will PSNProfiles follow suit? I'm no radical or anything like that but I have to kind of question, isn't this kind of an attack on peoples civil liberties ( the right of assembly and freedom of speech )?

[Keyser Soze]

context?