Could glitched trophies be removed by Sony?

[visighost]

I understand that for developers with underperforming games, working on a patch to address trophy issues does not make much financial sense. I was wondering, though: since the whole trophy process goes through Sony, would it be possible for them to nip glitched trophies in the bud? Removing them from the lists would technically give players access to the Platinums, assuming they are coded by Sony as "have all other trophies" and not for each game individually by the developers.

 

Have they ever addressed this issue publicly (I doubt it) - or are trophies too gimmicky for Sony to care (especialy since the glitched ones typically only affect games that brought them minimal revenues)?

 

(Apologies if this was addressed elsewhere - couldn't find anything using Search)

[Potent_Delusions]

Nah, Sony are not interested in trophies. 

 

They're one of the greediest companies in the industry, whether you like or not, and this would not make them any money whatsoever. No money made = no go.

 

They probably could do it, but they won't.

[DarkSoleride]

Nah they will not bother with doing things like this unless its their 1st Party games where they promote it like "Did you unlock the Platinum in HZD for the cool new theme" or the annual statistic sheet where they announce the total amount of trophies earned across PSN. Glitched trophies outside of 1st party i don't think they care to bother to fix.

[Terra]

It would be nice if they did but I don’t think they can or want to. Trophies are probably the least of their concerns 

[Helmet_time]

Could they?  I imagine that could.

Would they?  Almost certainly not.  Sony shows remarkably little concern for quality control as a general matter, a little feature like trophies isn't even going to pop up on their radar. 

[visighost]

I don't see this process as customer-driven though: I'm thinking developers themselves have a lot more clout. If they realize one of their trophies is glitched and can't/won't do anything about it, they could directly request their removal by Sony. A few hundreds stakeholders rather than millions...

[RNumbers]

1 hour ago, Potent_Delusions said:

They probably could do it, but they won't.

 

Yup, that's basically how I was going to put it.

 

5 minutes ago, visighost said:

I don't see this process as customer-driven though: I'm thinking developers themselves have a lot more clout. If they realize one of their trophies is glitched and can't/won't do anything about it, they could directly request their removal by Sony. A few hundreds stakeholders rather than millions...

 

I don't think devs are generally any more interested than Sony are. I believe there are examples of trophy requirements being tweaked (Overwatch, Paladins?), so they apparently have some control. Most just choose not to use it, I guess.

[visighost]

3 minutes ago, RNumbers said:

I don't think devs are generally any more interested than Sony are. I believe there are examples of trophy requirements being tweaked (Overwatch, Paladins?), so they apparently have some control. Most just choose not to use it, I guess.

 

I guess there's no way to know, and some developers have certainly been vocal in their dislike for the system (Toby Fox! Which made for a great trophy list though), but others have almost built their business model around trophies, so one would think they'd be pushier. I also think there is a correlation between glitched trophies being more likely to be in smaller games being more likely to be played by more passionate gamers being more likely to be people interested in trophies being more likely to put more pressure on smaller developers being more likely to listen to that important share of their customers. It's of course not a failproof theory (see ps+ games with glitched trophies), but hey, we're just talking here.

[Property_Damage]

Sony doesnt code the games

thats the job of developers to test their product before shipping it out

[MidnightDragon]

They could, but they wouldn't.

[JohnCenaSong-]

Well, they can't really remove one if you think about it.

 

They'd more likely have to change the trophy requirements because there's rules to trophies and just simply taking a trophy out would change the games overall points value. Therefore, it's up to the developers anyway, all Sony could do is enforce that developers to make sure all their trophies obtainable before the game is allowed to launch or something.

 

But, either way, I really doubt they'd bother because like most companies, achievements/trophies register quite low on their minds (except for crappy devs who make bad games and just want a quick buck off trophy hunters lol). It's such a niche community, none of them really want to dedicate any significant effort into pleasing a small number of people.

[Se7en]

17 hours ago, visighost said:

I was wondering, though: since the whole trophy process goes through Sony, would it be possible for them to nip glitched trophies in the bud?

 

Yes, it is possible.

Yes, they did it at least once: Max Payne originally had the 12th trophy “Did Someone Call the Exterminator?”, which was removed from the list before game release.

[FawltyPowers]

There's no way Sony would do something like that, checking each game before it's released to make sure all trophies will work when expected.

 

It should be down to the developer to fix glitched trophies as and when they are discovered. Not fixing them damages their reputation. It also affects sales as glitched trophies are announced on forums by the community and people advised to stay away from the game until they're fixed.

 

I've no idea how much of an influence this is in the grand scheme of things but for how long it would take to fix these trophies it's surely worth the effort.

[visighost]

To clarify, I was suggesting a process like this:

-Person A notices a trophy is glitched for Game X and contacts developer X.

-Developer X does not have the resources to fix the trophy, but respects their customers. Therefore, Developer X contacts Sony.

-Developer X: "Hey So, I can't fix Trophy Z for Game X, could you remove it from the trophy infrastructure that you control?"

-Perfect-World-Sony: "Sure thing, give me a few days." Bing, done, everyone's happy.

-Real-World-Sony: "Thank you for reaching out to us. A representative that has no idea what he's talking about and reads from a script will get back to you in 6 months and provide a generic non-answer. Have a nice day." Welp.