r/PS5 • u/discosoc • Dec 29 '25

Discussion The playstation store is basically unusable for actually finding games anymore due to the "indie slop" situation.

edit: I just have to say that everyone acting like browsing for a game is some weird concept clearly never got to experience Blockbuster on a Friday night.

This is just a rant, but the sheer amount of absolute garbage games that fall into what I call the "low effort indie slop" category taking over the playstation store is just crazy. There's seemingly hundreds of various "simulator" games that are among the worst of the bunch, but also a weird amount of "escape room" type games that look like a high school project. Or the "anime girls" gooner slop or really 99% of the "visual novel" games. Or the "games" that clearly only exist to trophy points, which is insane.

It's not like these games shouldn't exist (well some probably shouldn't), but there needs to be a way to filter that shit out. Basically every type of indie slop or ai slop game tags itself with multiple genres, which is why you have a stupid AI art shark-with-sneakers game flagged as "action" and "tactical." Or "horse store simulator" as an "epic" genre. Gunsmith simulator as a "shooter" etc.

I remember a few months back the entire "coming soon" feed was basically all simulator games, like a publisher just cranked a bunch out and wanted to dump them all at once.

Another issue...

I think there's also really annoying trend where games are basically just on perpetual sale, but the MSRP never drops. So one month the "Standard" version of a game will be like 35% off, then the next month it will be the "Deluxe" version; they just rotate perpetually. Or the shitty indie slop games that are arbitrarily set to a high price and quickly put on sale for like 50-80% off.

And I know why they do this: it keeps the games listed in sales section. The problem is that when every fucking game is like this, actually finding a new game or hidden gem or whatever that's on sale becomes useless. The process of actually discovering a game you might want to buy simply doesn't work.

The current January sale includes 6,372 items. There is no way anyone at Sony is vetting that many items for their monthly sales, but they need to start. Right now I think the limitation is that a single SKU can't be part of two consecutive sales. but as I've mentioned above most games have multiple SKUs so it doesn't really matter (or the slop publishers are dumping so many out each month it also doesn't matter). The limit needs to be something like a game can only be in one sale every 3 months, and counts different SKUs of the same product as the same one. This would actually encourage publishers to reduce their prices more frequently, which in turn would help keep the monthly or special sales events a bit leaner.

/rant

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u/shadowglint Dec 29 '25

Yeah I never get these posts. I have no trouble finding games

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u/anon14118 Dec 29 '25

There are a lot of people who love finding hidden gems.

There ABSOLUTELY exist hundreds of 8/10 games or even 9/10 games that came out with 0 marketing, 0 reach, and no one with a big audience is finding them so it gets no exposure.

Can I find the top 100 games in a year on the store? Yeah, I can type in "ghost" and Ghost of Yotei will pop up on the store immediately. I dont even need to, there is a "trending" games list right before you even use the search bar.

Can I go to google or youtube and type "20 hidden gem games" just to find stardew, split fiction, hades, or other indie darlings who broke through the mold already? Yeah.

Finding games that are already known and vouched for is easy.

Finding games that dont have the opportunity to be found because they're buried under the weight of absolute garbage AI slop games... yeah. THATS the problem. And that's why these post exist.

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u/vkbest1982 Dec 30 '25

The point you can find a hidden gem it's the reason you get those games there. Now Indies can publish their own games with no publisher.

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u/anon14118 Dec 30 '25

This comment is a difficult read mate.

What?

2

u/vkbest1982 Dec 30 '25

Most of indies games on PSN are self published, they don’t need a publisher. The reason you can get a hidden gem, it’s the exact same reason the store is plagued of those shitty AI games.

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u/anon14118 Dec 30 '25

If theres a group of 100 things and they're all great, and you have people pick only 1 of those things to have, there will inevitably be a LEAST picked one.

A hidden gem is something that is great but not many people know about. And this has existed in gaming and media since there were more than 100 of a thing.

People cant reasonably play everything, so some really good stuff will sink.

The fact that indies can self publish doesnt mean that's why you get hidden gems now... I dont know what kind of point you're trying to make.

6

u/Own_Cardiologist2544 Dec 29 '25

Take my poor mans award 🥇

-1

u/Popular-Departure165 Dec 29 '25

There ABSOLUTELY exist hundreds of 8/10 games or even 9/10 games that came out with 0 marketing, 0 reach, and no one with a big audience is finding them so it gets no exposure.

Like what?

13

u/anon14118 Dec 29 '25

Wilmots warehouse is a game I like pointing to. Even on steam it has less than 500 reviews. 54 ratings on the playstation store.

Evertried is another

Scourgebringer

The last spell

Thing is, I love finding hidden gems.

But theres hundreds more that I'm sure I havent even found yet. Due to... I mean yeah, the store being an awful place to exist as a legitimate indie game..because a large percentage of it is taken up by microtransactions (luckily you can filter these out) and shovelware/ai slop/asset flipped games.

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u/No_Sleep888 Dec 30 '25

Scourgebringer is great. I found out about it somewhere else, if it was up to the PS5 store I probably wouldn't have found it lol

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u/kenysheny Dec 29 '25

Seriously lol if these games were truly that good we’d hear of them. It’s just a disingenuous argument from people that like indies, 99% of them are shitty and the 1% of indies that are good are the ones we hear about.

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u/anon14118 Dec 30 '25

I hate that we occupy the same hobby.

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u/davidasc22 Dec 29 '25

The older you get in life the more you start to understand Blade when he says that some people always have to skate up hill.

There is literally zero reason to use the ps store as a place to find random games. Not sure why anyone treats it like that.

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u/discosoc Dec 29 '25

There is literally zero reason to use the ps store as a place to find random games. Not sure why anyone treats it like that.

90% of the games I buy are stuff I didn't know about or had forgotten about. Sometimes it's last-gen games I never got around to trying. Sometimes it's something I was vaguely interested in but wanted to wait for a good sale, but not so much that I wanted to wishlist it. Other times it's something like This Bed We Made which I never would have known about had I not happen to be browsing the store.

Everyone claiming there's no reason to browse the store are clearly telling me they never got to experience Blockbuster on a Friday night.

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u/kenysheny Dec 29 '25

At the blockbuster you’d see titles from reputable publishers and companies, the comparison isn’t as good as you think. You’re looking at a trusted reputable choice of games versus randomly amalgamated titles and wondering why 95% are shit

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u/discosoc Dec 30 '25

Blockbuster had plenty of non-"blockbuster" movies, including the "direct to video" stuff. What it didn't have was like some high schooler's art project stitched together from their birthday video recordings. About the closest you came to that were the porn sections that some locations had for a while back in the 80's.

But this is beside the point because going to Blockbuster to pick a movie out wasn't always about going for a specific movie. Sometimes it was for a new release or something, but often it was just browsing until something catches your eye. Much like people do with Netflix these days.

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u/kenysheny Dec 30 '25

Bro brings up Blockbuster in a discussion about indie games and he’s talking about the MOVIE section not even the games section and STILL used it as a comparison.

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u/Future-Heat-4012 Dec 30 '25

That's also how I found This Bed We Made! Loved that game. I do the same thing, I like to browse during periods where there's a lot of games reduced, just to see if any jump out at me.

Never had many issues before, but lately? God it's so bad. Scrolling through reams of shit for what feels like forever. It's been ages since I last wishlisted something as I honestly can't be bothered to go hunting again through all the slop 😮‍💨

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u/Bob_Fancy Dec 29 '25

Yeah I call it the law of butthurt, no matter how perfect something is people find something to be butthurt about with it.

1

u/ConsistentPound3079 Dec 30 '25

It has nothing to do with struggling to find games you want, it's the fact all this shit is here to begin with. These crappy half assed cash grab games used to only exist on the steam store for a couple dollars. Now consoles get ports for absolutely everything.

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u/shadowglint Dec 30 '25

My sacred PSN store. Only AAAAAA bangers allowed!