PlayStation could ban easy Platinum cookie-cutter games that currently plague the PS Store offering effortless Trophies.
I’ve heard of games on the PS Store offering Platinum Trophies for pressing a single button. However, for desperate Trophy hunters, these games could be a tempting proposition.
Stroke the Hamster for an easy PlayStation Platinum!
Only yesterday, we were checking out the PS Store Black Friday sales. I noticed some of these ‘games‘ were on offer. Take ‘Stroke the Hamster‘, which is part of a series of ‘Stroke the…; titles offering a variety of easy-to-earn Platinum.
What’s more, literally, all you have to do in these games is press X, usually, a thousand times. Then the Platinum Trophy is yours. Personally, I’d rather press X to Jason.
Sure, those added Platinum might look good at a quick glance, but we’re sure that once someone checks out your PSN profile to see the Platinums you’ve earned, seeing a flurry of ‘Stroke the…‘ titles might look a lot less impressive.
Could easy Platinum PlayStation games be banned?
Moreover, it seems that titles such as the above might be coming to an end. However, that’s if a letter apparently sent by Sony is to be believed. It seems that “shovelware” and easy Platinum games could be shadowbanned or delisted from the PS Store.
In a letter sent to Dex.Exe via an anonymous source, Sony has warned its PS Store partners that oversaturated “spam” could result in a ban.
“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,” reads the alleged letter from Sony.
The letter from Sony continues:
“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.
“Partner Requirements & Allowances: When SIE reviews the content submitted to PlayStation Store, products that have the following characteristics are identified as “spam” or “repetitive” content:
- “Products whose functionality and/or assets are copied or are not meaningfully different from products already published on the PlayStation Store, irrespective of the publisher of record.
- “Multiple concepts and product variants, published by individual partners, that have duplicative functionality or experiences, differentiated only by minor variances of functionality or assets.
- “Where possible, partners should consider aggregating small, similar content experiences into a single product, using in-game commerce to expand or extend the experience.
- “As an example, supplying different trophies for each product is not enough to differentiate content.”
You can still stroke the Hamster
At the time of writing, the aforementioned ‘Stroke the…‘ titles remain on the PlayStation Store.
Furthermore, we’re sure there are plenty of other easy-to-earn Platinum games on the platform. However, it remains to be seen if the words in the letter come to be true and we’ll end up seeing far fewer of these “games” on Sony’s storefront.
Do you like easy Platinum games?
What are your thoughts on Sony’s apparent crackdown on easy-to-earn cookie-cutter Platinum games? Let us know across our social media channels.
I suppose if worst comes to worst, we still have Hannah Montana: The Movie game, right?
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Featured Image Credit: Sony/Source: Dex.Exe