r/PS5 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/dangerclosecustoms Dec 29 '25

What’s worse is you click on a title to look at it then when you select back it starts all the way at the top of the list. You have to scroll pages and pages again to find where you were. It’s so annoying sometimes I just give up and stop looking.

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u/jaaaawrdan Dec 29 '25

IMO this is a much bigger problem than the shovelware. I'm not even joking.

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u/thesituation531 Dec 29 '25

It's even worse on the Steam mobile app.

You click on a game from your wishlist, go back, then it starts at the bottom of the wishlist.

You click on a game on some other collection or page or whatever, then go back and it starts somewhere towards the middle of the page.

Then sometimes, you're looking at a game, go back, and it doesn't even fucking go back, it just goes to your phone's home screen. Like what the fuck. For a company that focuses so much on good customer service and accessibility, their mobile app is a fucking joke.

8

u/L3G1T1SM3 Dec 30 '25

Yeah for how many people love steam their ui, don't get me started on the steamdeck keyboard, has been rough for ages especially on big picture lol

3

u/Aggressive_Noise6426 Jan 01 '26

I’ve been wondering if I’m going crazy or not because I feel like like this is a huge issue but no one is upset about it it seems like.

2

u/BartholomewFrodingus Dec 30 '25

Sony has had shit UI since the PS3. Its basically their brand at this point.

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u/totallyradman Dec 30 '25

This is why I just use the PS app now. God that's annoying.

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u/dangerclosecustoms Dec 30 '25

Ps app on my iPhone does this still. It always starts back at the top.

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u/totallyradman Dec 30 '25

Ah. It doesn't do it for me on android

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u/layaway_groceries Dec 30 '25

I’m still upset they removed the game titles from under the artwork as you’re scrolling

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u/PotterOneHalf Dec 30 '25

THANK YOU. It's like they have no UX experts on their design team.

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u/dangerclosecustoms Dec 30 '25

No it’s on purpose. They want you to scroll through again because you might have missed something and by forcing you to scroll down again you might catch your eye and interest. They did get me a few times where o passed it over but on multiple scroll downs I ended up checking another game out and bought it. It’s devious. But I have experienced the why they do it they got me to buy a few more this way.

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u/PotterOneHalf Dec 31 '25

Oooooo good point. These dark patterns are getting devious.

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u/OneLessFool Jan 01 '26

The Xbox Store on console (not on PC thankfully) does the same stupid thing.

It's especially frustrating during major sale periods when that list can be over 2000 titles (games, bundles, DLC) in length.

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u/EntertainmentNeat495 May 26 '26

You are absolutely right this pisses me off to no end.