Game Achievements Ltd

[GAchievements 50]

Good morning, I wanted to make a little thread as an open letter to the community and to allow a little more insight into what we are doing at Game Achievements Ltd.

 

Firstly I will get the rather large elephant out of the room. We have made shovelware, this is not something that we deny and it is not something that we are going to dispute, it is however something that we have learnt from.

 

The "Stroke The" games were low effort "games" created by us, reasons behind their creation vary but ultimately that makes no difference, they were made in a way that they should not have been. For that we are sorry for clogging up certain sections and the PSN store as a whole (obviously we were not alone in that one).

 

We do not however believe in removing history, we do believe in improvement and that is what we are going to be focusing on. We won't be removing the Stroke The games from the market, we will however be adding to them to ensure that there is additional content within the games, making them more than just a press X game. This fan be seen with the addition of the Quiz sections, with more to come adding additional gameplay elements. In order to ensure that there is more value.

 

Going forward we will not be releasing any further easy platinums, having said that, we have 5 additional stroke games already approved and one additional easy game that will release, but we will ensure that they also have additional content fleshing out the games added to them.

 

We have a number of games in the work which will release next year, these will be full titles which actually require effort and includes gameplay in order to complete.

 

Once again, we apologies for the games we have put out so far and will continue to work on them to get them to a more acceptable level.

 

We are open to your suggestions and comments but will not be responding to simply negative comments, negativity with construction is ok as that is how we learn.

 

Thanks for your time and hopefully we will be able to prove that we are a little more than just a shovelware creator.

[DrBloodmoney 25,208]

23 minutes ago, GAchievements said:

Going forward we will not be releasing any further easy platinums, having said that, we have 5 additional stroke games already approved and one additional easy game that will release, but we will ensure that they also have additional content fleshing out the games added to them.

 

It's nice that you came to this conclusion and this new methodology going forward completely independently and organically...

 

....and in no way as a necessity resulting from the newly implemented Sony policies that you yourself are a principle catalyst for.

 

 

23 minutes ago, GAchievements said:

We do not however believe in removing history, we do believe in improvement and that is what we are going to be focusing on. We won't be removing the Stroke The games from the market 

 

Why not?

 

These games are not "history" to be preserved - they are an infection to be excised. 

 

There is no historic value to retaining these products for sale - the only parts of them that were ever of note will be preserved anyways.

They exist only for trophies (as you admit) - and the trophies will remain.

They will forever exist on every profile that "earned" them - on sites like this one, and on PSN - and will stand in perpetuity as a totem to the seductive power of base-banality, and the enduring legacy of quick-fix exploitation.

 

 

I understand if you do not want to slam the door shut on a source of revenue - hell, I wouldn't either - but it's disingenuous at best to hide that further drip-fill profiteering behind a constructed veil of "historic preservation".

 

If this is a mea-culpa to the community you have exploited, (rather than simply the next in a long line of free-media troll-marketing, designed to keep the games under the spotlight, and acquiesce to the old adage - that "all publicity is good publicity", as I strongly suspect it is)...

 

... then it can only work if it starts start with fully washing clean the stain your spillage has made - at least to the best of your ability.

 

 

 

Edited November 25, 2022 by DrBloodmoney

[Rainbow Dash 3,922]

Looks like you've found something new to stroke: Your ego. 

[Darling Baphomet 4,297]

1 minute ago, StygianWolf4 said:

Looks like you've found something new to stroke: Your ego. 

 

Nuclear launch detected.

 

51 minutes ago, GAchievements said:

Thanks for your time and hopefully we will be able to prove that we are a little more than just a shovelware creator.

 

Nope.

[enaysoft 6,809]

1 hour ago, GAchievements said:

Thanks for your time and hopefully we will be able to prove that we are a little more than just a shovelware creator.

 

Your games are a joke, but I'd definitely commit to buying all of them...... on the one condition that you release a shit ton of free DLC for all your existing Stroke games, but make each one of them incredibly difficulty to earn the trophies.

 

Press X, Circle, Triangle, Square, L1, L2, in that order, 10000 times to stroke the Octopus. One mistake and back to stroke no1.  lol

 

There'd probably be nobody on the entire site with 100% completion anymore. That would be hilarious.

 

And then a year later you could patch in an easy mode.

 

 

 

Edited November 25, 2022 by enaysoft

[Sergen 9,739]

Whoever spammed the Stroking games for their easy platinum trophies is probably shitting themselves a bit when you say "additional content" because that'll probably mean new DLC trophies which you already experimented with in the Stroke the Dog trophy list. At least when Aabs Animals released with 4 easy trophies the money they made from it went to animal shelters, if we see the stroking games go to a similar cause with proof from yourself maybe that'll help your image a bit more as a game developer, instead you've currently exploited the image of those animals to sell platinum trophies to the addicts. I had sympathy for the people who developed their games and got Ratalaika to publish them because Sony hasn't made it easy for indie games to get recognition when their trophies actually take effort, but in this case you've made it even more difficult for indie developers who actually put effort into their games to get recognized. It'll be tough for you to undo any of the damage you've done and it's hard to see this as genuine because Sony implemented a new policy and now you probably have to save face to get money from trophy hunters in another way, at least I can say it's pretty unlikely I'll ever buy any of your games but power to you if you can somehow turn this shit show into further revenue after Sony stops you from releasing that trash to the store. 

[Rainbow Dash 3,922]

2 minutes ago, Sergen said:

At least when Aabs Animals released with 4 easy trophies the money they made from it went to animal shelters

 

This was the reason I bought it originally. Plus Aabs Animals went to the effort of different backgrounds, different cats etc. I'm glad I supported a good cause while earning trophies and looking at cute kittens. Also, apologies for the minor correction, but Aabs Animals has 5 trophies. 

[Sergen 9,739]

8 minutes ago, StygianWolf4 said:

 

This was the reason I bought it originally. Plus Aabs Animals went to the effort of different backgrounds, different cats etc. I'm glad I supported a good cause while earning trophies and looking at cute kittens. Also, apologies for the minor correction, but Aabs Animals has 5 trophies. 

 

Technicality, it's hard to get that 5th trophy for the 5th minute sitting there looking at a virtual cat! Lol, well genuinely I made a mistake for some reason there, I'm not quite the trophy hunter I was a few years ago but at least my brain cells weren't lost on shovelware besides the Aabs Animals list. Maybe if this guy was making his shovelware in 2015 he'd have had me as a customer but thankfully I stopped caring about squeezing out easy trophies or autopops a long time ago and didn't overdo it on my trophy list. But there's an idea for GAchievements, maybe some people will buy your games if you promise to pledge a percentage of the profits over to animal shelters (with the receipts) or charities that specialise in care for the animals that you're exploiting the image of currently for your own profits. Then maybe the jumping food games can have some of their profits donated to helping charities that stop people from staving. Just a thought there, you can turn this into something genuinely good and help your own image a lot here. 

Edited November 25, 2022 by Sergen

[Sergen 9,739]

19 minutes ago, zenovka said:

Apologize for what , starting unneeded drama? Press x for trophies was a deliberate attempt to start drama. Once fanning the fires of uneeded toxicity. People should be allowed to play what they want , whether ezpz , ultra hard , jrpg etc without judgement from others. In short go fuck yourself

 

This guy thought he was safe to do this but when Sony decided to step in and declare that they'll ban shovelware from being released onto the store he had to do something to save face. I see now that he's using a legal loophole of adding quiz modes to these stroking games and there are also a bunch of DLC packs based on that mode added to the Stroke the Dog trophy list. Claiming that it's a quiz game is the easiest way to program further shovelware while getting past Sony's quality control, it's pretty funny how there are trophies for getting a bunch of questions wrong in a row and some for getting the trophies correct so the trophies will actually take a bit more effort but it wasn't hard to beat spamming X however quiz games with an infinite time limit are still extremely simple because you can just google the answers, or he's probably gonna make all the questions extremely simple to work out the correct answer for by asking something like "how many legs does a dog have?" while leaving the options as 4, 6, 8 and 10. However in the meantime he's looking for the easiest way to get money from this predatory method of development while knowing that his customer base has no more than 2 brain cells so they'll need some kind of convincing to continue buying the garbage once the trophies go from 0/10 difficulty to 0.1/10 difficulty. 

Edited November 25, 2022 by Sergen

[MysticStiv 77]

Thanks for Stroke the Llama, as a Llama myself I fully enjoyed the experience.
 

Sorry to the gamers out there whos fun is being gatekeeped by the same people who will request no difficulty, no multiple playthroughs, no online trophies. 

 

I hope you continue to do business and all the best!

[DividedByMankind 763]

This is not games. And they should of never been approved in the first place on the store Glad sony is removing this crap, thats allready killed LB! 

[CelestialRequiem 4,707]

8 hours ago, GAchievements said:

For that we are sorry for clogging up certain sections and the PSN store as a whole (obviously we were not alone in that one).

Ah good, thanks for that. Since you're apologizing and attempting to make things right -- when can everyone expect to be refunded and your games delisted? 

[GAchievements 50]

2 minutes ago, CelestialRequiem said:

Ah good, thanks for that. Since you're apologizing and attempting to make things right -- when can everyone expect to be refunded and your games delisted? 

If people wish for a refund then they can go through the official channels for it, we have no powers to issue them unfortunately.

[fbdbh 1,393]

Big PSNProfiles moment right here

 

[Silver-I-Chariot 1,180]

Since you are the dev and talking openly, would you mind sharing some stats with us? How many games were sold, how much time does it take to release a shovelware game, how much profit do you make from each sold copy, how did you come up with the idea, are you a real company or just one guy in their parents garage? I'd like to know stuff like that.

[GAchievements 50]

14 minutes ago, Silver-I-Chariot said:

Since you are the dev and talking openly, would you mind sharing some stats with us? How many games were sold, how much time does it take to release a shovelware game, how much profit do you make from each sold copy, how did you come up with the idea, are you a real company or just one guy in their parents garage? I'd like to know stuff like that.

Some info we cannot give due to disclosure agreements. Yes it is a real company. The first part of creating a game takes a couple hours, then there is another few hours doing the blackened stuff within Sony's systems. Overall a quick and simple game will take about 6 to 8 hours. That is just the completion of it, there is then the QA which just depends on when there is availability, could be 5 days, could be 3 months.

 

As for number sold, I cannot say, not that I don't want to but simply that we do not know atm, happy to give numbers once we do know though.

[Infected Elite 10,693]

13 minutes ago, GAchievements said:

 

As for number sold, I cannot say, not that I don't want to but simply that we do not know atm, happy to give numbers once we do know though.

 

You would have numbers. Especially quarterly. These have been around more than 3 months. Quit bullshitting..

 

You sus in the comments,

you sus in real life,

imagine makin' fake pages just to speak your own mind,

Goddamn that must suck, you hate yourself and know why

[GAchievements 50]

4 minutes ago, Infected Elite said:

 

You would have numbers. Especially quarterly. These have been around more than 3 months. Quit bullshitting..

 

You sus in the comments,

you sus in real life,

imagine makin' fake pages just to speak your own mind,

Goddamn that must suck, you hate yourself and know why

As I said, when we have them we will be happy to say.

[Silver-I-Chariot 1,180]

25 minutes ago, GAchievements said:

Some info we cannot give due to disclosure agreements. Yes it is a real company. The first part of creating a game takes a couple hours, then there is another few hours doing the blackened stuff within Sony's systems. Overall a quick and simple game will take about 6 to 8 hours. That is just the completion of it, there is then the QA which just depends on when there is availability, could be 5 days, could be 3 months.

 

As for number sold, I cannot say, not that I don't want to but simply that we do not know atm, happy to give numbers once we do know though.

Damn that's really some low effort for good money, can't blame you for abusing this system. Did you enjoy hunting trophies privately before starting this whole thing or are you just someone without any interest in trophies who saw a good opportunity?

[GAchievements 50]

1 minute ago, Silver-I-Chariot said:

Damn that's really some low effort for good money, can't blame you for abusing this system. Did you enjoy hunting trophies privately before starting this whole thing or are you just someone without any interest in trophies who saw a good opportunity?

I have my own account that I use for trophy hunting yes. Have done so for years on Xbox too.

[Infected Elite 10,693]

3 minutes ago, GAchievements said:

I have my own account that I use for trophy hunting yes. Have done so for years on Xbox too.

yeah probably before all these trash games were made because well, they didn't exist. You had to play pretty legit games for the most part.. but you have tarnished that will all this crap.

[Jeanoltt 1,968]

9 hours ago, GAchievements said:

This will be seen with the addition of the Quiz sections, with more to come adding additional gameplay elements, in order to ensure that there is more value.

Believe me, I don't think anyone will be downloading 86 of your games again if you don't release new trophies with it.

[Silver-I-Chariot 1,180]

5 minutes ago, GAchievements said:

I have my own account that I use for trophy hunting yes. Have done so for years on Xbox too.

 

I see, good luck with your endeavours then. I certainly can relate to all the hate towards shovelware but if I'm honest, it's not really your fault. First of all, there is apparently a market you successfully discovered and filled, and secondly there is no quality control at Sony. It's on PSNP to take care of the leaderboards and keep things clean, and on Sony to take care of their own store. If neither does that, well, that's kind of their own fault. 

[ArmoredSnowman 2,351]

1 hour ago, GAchievements said:

I have my own account that I use for trophy hunting yes. Have done so for years on Xbox too.

That TJ account, right?

[GAchievements 50]

12 minutes ago, ArmoredSnowman said:

That TJ account, right?

No, I don't wish to share my main private one, I'm sure you can understand. It's also not actually linked to the site.

Edited November 25, 2022 by GAchievements