PlayStation Bans Shovelware and Easy Platinum Games on PS Store

[Moonface]

PlayStation has decided to ban all shovelware and "easy Platinum" games from the PlayStation Store, in an effort to reduce the number of low effort, low quality titles submitted to the store.

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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.

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 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.

Any developers who break these new rules will potentially be subjected to any of the following actions by PlayStation:

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• Content Excluded from PlayStation™Store Merchandising
• Discoverability on PlayStation™Store is restricted.
• Content does not feature in automatic merchandising placements, such as the “New Releases” strand.
• Content Delisted from PlayStation™Store
• Content is not searchable and can only be accessed via direct link on web and mobile stores.
• Impact on CertOps Process
• Content is not permitted to proceed to publication until policy violations are rectified.
• Review slot availability is affected.
• Content Takedown
• Content is removed from PlayStation™Store until policy violations are rectified.
• PlayStation®Partners Account Suspension or Termination
• Multiple rejections or takedowns may result in the suspension or eventual termination of a partner’s PlayStation Partners account.
• Suspension limits the ability to submit and publish new content. Existing published content can remain on PlayStation™Store, if that content complies with SIE policies.
• Termination of an account results in the removal of all content from PlayStation™Store.

 

For those who do not know what an "easy Platinum" game means, it means any game designed for the primary purpose of offering easy trophy completion. These games tend to be appealing to trophy hunters looking to boost their trophy score, and with the recent roll out of PlayStation Stars which rewards players for earning trophies (among other things), it's likely PlayStation have taken this stance now rather than earlier so as to also avoid players farming for easy rewards from the program.

Source: https://dexdotexe.com/playstation-bans-shovelware-and-easy-platinum-games-on-the-playstation-store/

[Shagger]

If this is PlayStation doing this only now, it's long overdue. The PS Store is not nearly as bad as Steam when it comes to shovelware, poor quality control and achievement farming games, but the fact that they have got these games on the store at all is bad enough. I mean, who went down on who for games like Life of Black Tiger to not only get on the PlayStation store, but be promoted on PlayStation's YouTube channel? Then there's Gilson B Pontes, does he have photos of Jim Ryan at an orgy or something? How else would he get his game onto PlayStation year after year?

Edited November 22, 2022 by Shagger

[Moonface]

3 minutes ago, Shagger said:

If this is PlayStation doing this only now, it's long overdue. The PS Store is not nearly as bad as Steam when it comes to shovelware, poor quality control and achievement farming games, but the fact that they have got these games on the store at all is bad enough.

I can't speak for Xbox as I don't use the platform to browse their store, but Nintendo is pretty bad when it comes to shovelware too so I think all the stores have the problem in some degree. I personally doubt Sony would have made this change to their store if not for the PS Stars program though, since if it was going to be implemented at any time I think it would've made more sense to roll it out right at the start of the PS5 launch so that developers wouldn't flood the PS5 store with garbage right out of the gate while the number of PS5 only titles would be lower and therefore make it easier for games to be found on the store.

[Crazycrab]

Does this mean we won't get to see another masterpiece from Gilson B. Pontis in 2023?

[Kane99]

Good, this should have happened a long time ago, especially with how easy it was for developers to get their crap games on there. I mean, it should be easy for developers to submit games, but they should at least be looked over by a person or a panel to decide if the game is competent enough to add to the marketplace or not. Hell, leave it to the users to test it before releasing it. I'm sure you can get gamers to volunteer their time to try new games before they release to the marketplace, whether they be good or bad. 

Good start on Sony for actually changing this. Maybe those devs releasing crap will actually step up their development. I doubt that though.

[Shagger]

5 hours ago, Crazycrab said:

Does this mean we won't get to see another masterpiece from Gilson B. Pontis in 2023?

 

[Kane99]

I'm sure they still have some kind of creator program for anyone to make games, it's just now you probably won't make money off of them or they won't have achievements and all that. 

I think Xbox mostly has it covered, they still have some shady games on their program, but for the most part it seems like they don't allow tons of garbage to get released.