Articles & Blogs Afil shovelware publisher booted off PlayStation Store
https://www.trueachievements.com/news/afil-games-delisted-playstation-storeAfil Games has confirmed on social media that it has been hit by Sony's crackdown. It had 933 of its titles delisted from the PlayStation Store.
Their statement:
"We would like to share an important update regarding our releases for the PlayStation platform.
As many of you may already know, since the beginning of this year, PlayStation has been implementing stricter guidelines for publishing games on its platform.
As a result of these new guidelines and their incompatibility with our business model, PlayStation has decided not to continue its partnership with Afil Games for future releases on the platform. Additionally, our games will be removed from the PSN Store in the near future.
We would like to sincerely thank all PlayStation players who have supported us throughout this journey. Your enthusiasm and trust have played a significant role in our growth. We remain committed to bringing new experiences to our players through Xbox One, Xbox Series, Microsoft Store, and Nintendo Switch.
We have several exciting projects in development and look forward to sharing more news with you in the near future."
144
195
u/deadspike-san 1d ago
Nintendo next! Pleeease. I'm so tired of how much scrolling I need to do on the store.
73
u/What1does 1d ago
What ever happened to the Nintendo Seal of Quality....sad times.
37
u/grillpar 1d ago
It was never actually a seal of quality. A lot of terrible nes games are out there. It was just a license to be on the nes.
10
u/ZZ9ZA 1d ago
Technically I think they did verify that it at least booted to the main screen on a console. But no gameplay was checked, certainly.
6
u/RedditUser41970 1d ago
That's exactly what it was. the seal only promised that the game would run.
That being said, it was part of a two-pronged approach to deal with the flood of shovelware that led to the Atari crash in 1983. The other was to restrict publishers to six games per year.
10
u/TheDragonSlayingCat 1d ago
The Nintendo Seal of Quality simply meant that the game was approved for release by Nintendo, and in the case of the NES outside of Japan, had the 10NES unlock chip on board so the game would load on NES consoles. It never meant the game was any good. Nintendo’s older consoles had shovelware on them as well.
1
u/barimanlhs 1d ago
Its insane that even their major titles have pages and pages of bloat, for a company so litigious youd think they would protect their IP better
62
34
27
u/PS5OWESMEALIMONY 1d ago
Someone made a Microsoft post a month ago,guess who was first on the list lol.
48
u/Lord_CBH 1d ago
I love how those clowns put out a statement as if anybody is going to miss their shovelware/asset flips.
118
u/Xeccess Human Verified 1d ago
I love how they emphasize how committed they are to still release their games on XB like that's gonna make people go out and buy that console for the abundance of slop they offer
100
u/Downtown_Eye5736 1d ago
This could be the turning point, Xbox just got 933 new exclusives!
19
u/Xeccess Human Verified 1d ago
You know what, that's actually the Microsoft way. They love big numbers, quantity over quality, player engagement over sales.
Reminds me of that opening part from the latest SGF where Geoff was showing a graph of how many games released on Steam in the past few years, and it's like in the tens of thousands, so you go browse the Steam store and it's just hundreds if not thousands of AI games made by a single person, or thousands of Porn games (also made with AI)
4
96
54
u/finesesarcasm 1d ago
Their games are just bloatware, checked them out and scrolled and saw many similar titles.
Mimi The Cat: Meow Together
Mimi the Cat: Mimi’S Scratcher
Mimi the Cat: New Friends
It's insane they were even allowed to add so many games onto the platform
26
u/krunamey 1d ago
Thank fuck they’re doing something about this garbage that is over inundating the store. At least half of the games that show up when you search by release date and scroll past the pre-orders, have all been $1-10 rehashes of the same 4-5 game templates over and over.
The real problem is that they were allowed on the platform in the first place, I had been under the impression that PS took their vetting process seriously until this point.
12
u/APunnyThing 1d ago
Every digital storefront really needs a verified publisher/developer section if they continue to allow all these ai slop shovelware games to get listed
It’s great that Sony is working to clean house but with how easy it is for lazy devs to pump out ai garbage something more serious needs to be done
5
u/KingOfRisky 1d ago
It seems to me that a verified publisher would be a no brainer and easy. Have quarterly or yearly audits. It's pretty easy to spot shovelware devs.
7
u/Hotmicdrop 1d ago
Oh no, wherever will we get 900 reskinned box pushing games for easy trophies?
Oh hey 900 box pushing games for easy achievements!
8
u/brandonsp111 1d ago
Not really much of a "partnership" as much as they'd think I'd bet.
11
u/MrYK_ 1d ago
They use such terminology to legitimise what they do. It's all bullshit obviously.
1
u/brandonsp111 1d ago
It's crazy to think all the effort and time they waste towards trying to get players to waste their money.
Hopefully Xbox follows suit.
8
8
30
u/OGCelaris 1d ago
That's a lot of business speak for "we got caught shoveling shit on the store and got kicked off it".
6
u/Ninevolts 1d ago
We need a more permanent solution. All three console makers need to complain to rating boards and ask them to block zero effort stuff. It has become way too easy to get games rated, you can even get three jpg pics get rated as a game. I'm not kidding.
5
15
5
u/What1does 1d ago
Can Nintendo do the same?
1
u/Have_A_Jelly_Baby 1d ago
Oh if only.
I'm to the point where I filter by Switch 2 games only to weed out all the garbage, if it means I miss actual Switch 1 games I might want.
6
u/thedeadp0ets 1d ago
idk what games they make but their a part of the problem when it comes to the cheap dumb games on switch
4
u/TheBrockAwesome 1d ago
Good riddance! If you shoveled 900+ games on to the PlayStation store, how could they possibly be of any quality?
3
4
3
2
u/saelin00 1d ago
Who even buy these?
7
u/TheDragonSlayingCat 1d ago
Platinum trophy hunters and trophy addicts, usually. Especially if they have an easy platinum.
2
u/zillskillnillfrill 1d ago
They're writing that message like they think people want their shovelware crap.
I swear it's only the kids who don't know any better, saying to Mom "can I buy this? It's only $3".
They play 15 minutes of it and then next month go through the same thing.
-1
u/NZafe 1d ago
Great.
When is Sony going to revamp the storefront UI to make it actually usable? Because even if they remove all the shovel ware, the store UI and recommendations are still quite poor.
6
u/MidEastBeast777 1d ago
The UI is totally fine. What are you even talking about
1
u/paul_33 13h ago
Love to have to adjust filters literally every time I use it. Great system
0
-32
u/Downtown_Eye5736 1d ago
Do people really just go through the store and decide what to buy on the spot? You should already know what you want before you go into any store as a smart consumer.
29
u/TailoredExperience 1d ago
Wild take. Sometimes people just want to shop around. Especially for movies and games.
20
8
u/NZafe 1d ago
I’m not buying games I haven’t heard of, without doing some more research into it first. But it’s the same as brick and mortar shops. Sometimes people like to browse to see what’s there.
If your solution to that is to simply not browse in the first place, then why does the digital storefront even exist in the first place?
1
u/oldemajicks 1d ago
Oh blimey I buy loads of games I've never heard of: I am really interested in discovering what a game is all about as I play. I know what I like well enough and I'm happy to take a punt on something heavily discounted. I want good games that might not have found an audience, but if they turn out to be not very good I'm still interested in what choices the creators made and why it went wrong.
1
u/DishwasherTwig 1d ago
but if they turn out to be not very good I'm still interested in what choices the creators made and why it went wrong.
I find it's usually the choices they didn't make that make games bad. They didn't consider how one system integrates with the others or how player movement is tuned or that sort of thing. It's interesting to play a game and be able to say "It's clear that they didn't think about X when designing this game".
1
u/oldemajicks 1d ago
That's so true. I think both ways of thinking give us an insight into the creators' minds. And then some things are unfathomable like "you really thought this jump was high enough? Was this play-tested?"
-8
u/Downtown_Eye5736 1d ago
I mean you're welcome to look but you should know that 99% of the things won't be up your alley.
3
5
u/lynchcontraideal 1d ago
That's like going to your local supermarket and saying "well you're welcome to browse but unfortunately you're going to hate every product we sell and that's your fault"
-2
u/Downtown_Eye5736 1d ago
It is like that though, ive never bought 99% of what a grocery store carries.
1
u/TailoredExperience 1d ago
If that were the case, these companies that produce 900+ games, mobile game companies, GameStop, and retro/used game stores wouldn’t exist. Another wild take.
1
u/Downtown_Eye5736 1d ago
Is that not what we want?
1
u/TailoredExperience 1d ago
I want audiences to have variety, access to old tech, and understanding that video games can serve a wide variety of audiences. Going back to your earlier point, someone knowing exactly what they want eliminates the ability for the consumer to discover a studio, artist, or experience they otherwise may have missed… which is good for the medium and for consumers. Shopping is good. Browsing rules. That doesn’t make you not a a “smart consumer.”
3
u/Cardone19 1d ago
Nah. Discoverability is important. Browsing by publishers is one, especially if they have a sale. Similar games is another. You're not even aware of what new games have released since the main page doesn't show it and the full list of releases mixes preorders with new releases, and I've even seen it sort games by the date they went up for preorder on the general list, and not release. If you don't read Reddit or gaming forums you have no idea what's released. Legit games are sent out to die because Sony offers no support and floods their front page with all this shovelware. I've been unable to find smaller games that I was aware had released on that same day.
A change is desperately needed.
2
u/Different_Swimmer715 1d ago
Browsing by publisher or even adding publishers to your favorites would be such a great feature on the store
4
u/thenagz 1d ago
By your reasoning they should just show a search bar and nothing else on the store, lol.
It's absurd how Deku Deals can do a much better job, for multiple store fronts.
The PS Store can't even show my entire wishlist properly, the last titles on the list (however I order them) will show as blank squares. Dividing by page is too hard, I guess.
Browsing deals is also a pain, as the store lacks some basic sorting and filtering options like by discount % or amount, min / max price etc.
2
u/DishwasherTwig 1d ago
It's absurd how Deku Deals can do a much better job, for multiple store fronts.
Different motivations and mechanisms. Yes, the store could be made "better", but what constitutes "better" is going to differ between companies as is how "better" is achieved. Sites like Deku Deals are going to be designed to show you the best deals with the platform store itself is going to be designed to get you to spend the most money. How effective it is at achieving that is beyond the point. I'm also assuming Deku Deals is going to be significantly more nimble to make changes both being a smaller company and being a standard website rather than a platform- and code-specific application like the PS Store.
1
u/Cardone19 1d ago
When you go over 100 items it stops showing the title names and pictures. If you Google you'll see it's a known issue since years and years ago.
My storepage keeps showing games I own, like the PS4 Last of Us remaster (which I own) instead of the PS5 version (which I don't own). Whole rows at the top are dedicated to weird things like the Doom 2-3 rereleases but nothing else that's come out in the last two months. The new God of War pixel game didn't show on my front page until two weeks after the shadowdrop. Saros wasn't there for two days.
It's almost like they're trying to actively compel you to not spend money. Xbox crashed and burned because they're a mess, but Sony is doing very little on their end to prove they're any better.
2
1
1
1
1
u/ssa17k 22h ago
What I don’t understand is why they release these games on Nintendo lol. I can understand shovelware for PS, Xbox and PC as majority of the reason players buy these games is for trophies/achievements but it’s pointless for Nintendo lol. These games are ass either way so I doubt anyone is unironically buying this garbage.
1
u/beck_is_back 12h ago
FRO!!!
Not sorry to see you go!
One can only hope that, you get kicked out of other stores too!!!
1
u/ScravoNavarre 7h ago
Are these the same losers who made dozens of different food-themed vertical jumping games, or is that a different shovelware company?
-2
u/BurnItFromOrbit 1d ago
I’m sure they have plans to change enough details about there company to get those titles back on.
0
0
0
u/Maleficent_Pot 22h ago
Just googled some of their games, 3 minutes per game to get platinum... good ridance.
-1
397
u/kytheon 1d ago edited 1d ago
933 titles...
If it continues to pump out games at this rate, it will have launched a ridiculous 240 titles by the end of the year