Sony Reportedly taking steps to ban Shovelware

[LastMinuteSavior]

4 hours ago, Sofa King said:

I'm sure plenty of devs have been complaining to Sony about their games being buried under this avalanche of shovelware.

 

Definitely.

And that's the true reason for Sony doing this. Not for us.

 

6 hours ago, diskdocx said:

SIE strives to ensure that customers can search and discover the full breadth of experiences on PlayStation, and that partners have a fair means of being discovered. When partners oversaturate or “spam” PlayStation™Store with many variants of the same type of content, it can negatively impact both the customer and partner experience.

 

3 hours ago, MilanYildirim said:

shovelbros

 

That's... what I...

 

 

[AlphaLiquid-X]

2 hours ago, Darling Baphomet said:

 

... Except the vast majority of Ratalaika games were full fledged indie games except with shit trophy lists. So yes, they would, unless your fearmongering about the coming of Ratalaikagnarok amounts to nothing.

 

Honestly, the amount of people who don't understand that Ratalaika is a publisher who handles distribution and equates them with shovelware is one of the biggest issues with the discourse around this stuff. An easy trophy list doesn't equate to being cheap cash ins. 

[Sirpickle311]

Turns out Sony were also sick of reading threads complaining about EZ platinums everyday.

[Milktastrophe]

Do you think the super power up pinball games fall under this definition of spam? They're definitely actual games, but they do look like it's just re-skins so probably spam?

 

I've only played one, and it was ok. Maybe I need to buy them all of they go on sale before being delisted.

[Viper]

2 hours ago, Raidou Kuzunoha XIV said:

Preview: The Trophy Wars - Chapter 12: The potential end of the shovelware menace

 

In this thrilling saga that's spanned multiple heated locked and deleted threads across PSNProfiles, it seems the epic masterpiece may be reaching its exciting conclusion soon! Will the rumours prove true, or will the fate of the leaderboards' legitimacy still hang in the balance? Find out, in the next exciting episode of this likely to reach 20+ pages thread! Hurry, don't miss the action before it's locked/deleted - limited time only!

I don't know why, but I totally read this in the DBZ narrators voice. 

[LucasDiasC]

I personally think this is huge and for once a step in the right direction from Sony. Also I think the spam publishers will have a hard time now even if they try to exploit and test the limits of this new policy, because as of now there aren't any and it looks like they will be willing to ban and not allow new stuff from devs who cross that line too many times, which is amazing. 

("Multiple rejections or takedowns may result in the suspension or eventual termination of a partner’s PlayStation Partners account.")

 

 

[AlphaLiquid-X]

Just now, Milktastrophe said:

Do you think the super power up pinball games fall under this definition of spam? They're definitely actual games, but they do look like it's just re-skins so probably spam?

 

I've only played one, and it was ok. Maybe I need to buy them all of they go on sale before being delisted.

 

Probably not. There's enough difference in things like ramp and spinner layouts that they should be safe. 

[HusKy]

20 minutes ago, LucasDiasC said:

I personally think this is huge and for once a step in the right direction from Sony.

 

That's an odd thing to say after buying thousands of these non-games, isn't it?

[Lil-Gameboy123]

Please God make this happen ?. It has been an exhausting experience seeing these flood the store the past 3 years. As much as i've been a bandwagon for wishing for actions like this to happen while playing these shovelware titles at the same time, I'm just happy to see that we may FINALLY get some peace from these titles.

1 minute ago, HusKy said:

 

That's an odd thing to say after buying thousands of these non-games, isn't it?

 

I can even ask myself that question. I will even admit that I would be crazy enough to get called out on my opinions on Shovelware games, but I'm honest about it because I know what I'm buying and know what I'm gonna get myself into. After all, it's better to come clean and be honest about it than to deny or hide the truth of your own actions because everyone will have their own sense of judgment on topics such as this.

[Helium974]

As someone who have fallen to these shovelwares due to an old addiction to trophies, I hope this is true and I hope Sony will delete the trophies linked to this game. 

ATM, I have thousands of trophies hidden that are linked to shovelware. I ended hidding them because I didn't want to contribute to the shitshow the leaderboard has become.

I hope Sony will free me from this shame ?

[You]

None of us need to see the shovelware anymore on this site, for us that problem has already fixed, and those that love buying, I think at this point should be allowed to do so.

 

Slowing the trickle is just going to make the problem go on forever but at a slower pace. There are already about 2000 of these games in circulation, it's too late to go back to how things were 6 years ago.

 

I think Sony should infact just completely open the flood gates even more, let's have 100s of these games coming out every single day.

The bullshit in complete denial reasons people sometimes give for buying them.

 

If you love these games so much, then have thousands upon thousands of them, put your money where your mouth is, I say. If you love them so much, have even more.

 

People need a reason to stop buying these games organically, the pressure to buy them in the first place or should be placed on the user.

 

Give people a reason to wake up and realise what's important, because it certainly isn't Trophy booster packs masquerading as "games" being the only issue.

 

 

[DeepEyes7]

Hope some actions were retroactive, like merging all the sagas of identical games in just one trophy list...

[LucasDiasC]

37 minutes ago, HusKy said:

 

That's an odd thing to say after buying thousands of these non-games, isn't it?

no its not because I didn't buy a single one

Edited November 22, 2022 by LucasDiasC

[Darling Baphomet]

1 hour ago, AlphaLiquid-X said:

Honestly, the amount of people who don't understand that Ratalaika is a publisher who handles distribution and equates them with shovelware is one of the biggest issues with the discourse around this stuff. An easy trophy list doesn't equate to being cheap cash ins. 

 

I mean, the issue is less the quality of the games themselves and more the effect they have on trophy hunting, which is undeniably a negative one.

[HusKy]

23 minutes ago, enaysoft said:

There are already about 2000 of these games in circulation, it's too late to go back to how things were 6 years ago.

 

I'd say it will have impact on the store itself but not so much on this website in terms of current ranks, leaderboards and points.

 

---------

 

Gonna throw this in here since we are at it:

 

https://psnprofiles.com/games?order=average

 

This chart illustrates how insane the last few months were.

 

7 minutes ago, LucasDiasC said:

no its not because I didn't buy a single one

 

Alright, replace the word "buying" with "playing".

Edited November 22, 2022 by HusKy

[Silver-I-Chariot]

57 minutes ago, HusKy said:

 

That's an odd thing to say after buying thousands of these non-games, isn't it?

 

I believe people like him, or any top rankers in general will be the most happy to see these games gone. They don't do it because it's fun, they do it to keep up. There must be immense pressure on them to keep buying shovelware. There are many top ranking trophy hunters who quit because they couldn't keep up or didn't want to waste time and money on shovelware anymore. It's not fun to anyone. If showelware is gone maybe even people on top can finally find some room to have fun playing games again. Must be liberating. Well at least that's how I would have felt if I was a top 10 guy. On the other hand, I'm ranked 70839 so what do I know? 

[pavelbagirov]

I like to play some easy games between big ones

[HusKy]

2 minutes ago, Silver-I-Chariot said:

There must be immense pressure on them to keep buying shovelware.

 

I have heard this argument before and definitely disagree. This isn't some life-threatening medical condition, these people are just buying trophies. Simple as that.

[TakemetoNarnia4]

These games don't just ''appear'' on the PS store. There are people in Sony who accept and release them. Banning the developers of those easy plat game is a joke. The problem is not them. 

[ShadeSplit]

7 hours ago, jgm4789 said:

Im all for getting rid of the jumping stroke the Animal q type games. But i hope this doesn't screw over the legit indie games that have easy 30 minute plats. Ratalaika games have a lot of stuff thats fairly decent in spite of thier easy trophy lists so id hate to see them get screwed over as a lot of thier stuff is what i would consider a real game and not a heres a picture of a cat, click this 50 times for platinum. As theres a much bigger difference between awesome pea 1 and 2 then these jumping Animal letter games.

 

So have them give all of their games "real" trophy lists. Problem solved.

[Cleggworth]

Interesting. If this is true and they can do it without any loopholes for them to sneak back through might it be time to purge them here as well? It was a never ending task and likely impossible until now but if its a finite number.... make them worth zero for leaderboards perhaps? Getting rid of them entirely is probably too much of an ask

[DrBloodmoney]

So, here's a genuine question....

 

 

...let's say one of the most prolific of these Shovelware Devs does run afoul of these rules, and is made an example of by Sony - and all of their existing products are removed from the store permanently (as is threatened in the more "nuclear" option for actions to be taken by Sony.)

 

 

In that scenario, when suddenly a substantial swathe of these products is no longer available to purchase to new people, what does PSNProfiles do?

 

 

So many of these games are tied to such a small number of actual "developers", that if even one of them were hit with this extreme end of Sony retribution, it would substantially affect any future possibility of the top end of the Leaderboard changing - it would essentially cement the positions of the top 200-300 places on the board, as those who already used that glut of products would have the trophies from them, and no one else would ever be able to catch up to them, as a substantial crop would no longer be available to them. 

No matter how much they did going forward, the existing Trophy-Gatherers would have such a massive head-start and software availability advantage, that it would be immaterial.

 

 

In that scenario, is PSNProfiles forced to enact their own "nuclear" option, and retroactively reduce the points value of those specific shovelware softwares to 0?

 

Are they forced to reduce the points value of all Shovelware games to 0, in order to re-level the playing field? 

 

Or do they simply say "well, some games become unavailable / unobtainable after a time - "thems the breaks" - and accept that those folks who engaged with those trophy-purchase softwares at the time they were available for purchase, are forever canonised at the top of the boards?

 

 

 

Edited November 22, 2022 by DrBloodmoney

[Maxie_M0us3]

Good! May the purge begin!

[James Tiger]

“That’s one small step for Sony, one giant leap for players.”

 

-- Jim Ryan

[Bloke]

If Sony nukes these 'games' from the store and these 'developers' can no longer produce their fecal matter on the store, it's a step in the right direction.

 

The next thing I personally think should happen is all those players who invested in these games should have all shovelware titles be given a zero score for those 'games' on the PSNP leaderboards. 

Edited November 22, 2022 by TriadThunder-X