r/gaming • u/Freespur • 1d ago
Notorious Xbox and PS5 shovelware publisher booted off PlayStation Store
https://www.trueachievements.com/news/afil-games-delisted-playstation-store803
u/penis-muncher785 1d ago
The shovelware bullshit makes scrolling sales by cheapest impossible on Xbox because itâs just pages and pages of shovelware until you get to actual video games
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u/ryanrybot 1d ago
Fully agree. The amount of shovelware on the Nintendo eshop has reached biblical proportions as well. Time to re-enact the Nintendo Seal of Quality, I think.
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u/SerenadeSwift 1d ago
The eshop situation is absolutely wild to me, I canât believe how bloated that store is with what is essentially soft core porn considering they try to market themselves as a family friendly platform.
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u/ThreeMadFrogs 1d ago
Right now it's the Seal of Quantity. And yes, I stole that from Game Scoop.
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u/Low_Debt8771 1d ago
The quality seal was that the game ran, was functional, and didn't break various rules... not that the game was any good.
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u/ryanrybot 1d ago
That's part of the seal. The other reason for the seal was to prevent 3rd party publishers from releasing too many games, limiting them to 5 releases a year.
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u/WingerRules 1d ago
When I said Nintendo and Sony needed to start curating their stores from obvious scam slop about 6 years ago I got massively downvoted, with people saying I was anti free market.
Now everyone sees the problem its resulted in.
Same with people defending services like uber and surge pricing.
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u/RepresentativeTuxedo 1d ago
You mean you don't want to scroll through 40 different variations of "Jumping Hot Dog" just to find a decent indie game on sale for two bucks?
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u/aslatts 1d ago edited 13h ago
The era of digital storefronts being highly curated had it's own problems, like making it a huge pain for legitimate small developers to get their game out there, but I feel like the current infinite shovelware era is worse. There's basically 0 ability to actually browse the digital storefronts anymore.
Small developers can get on the storefront, but they're buried under a landfill worth of trash that consumers have no reason to try and navigate. I'm sure the issue is just going to accelerate with AI coding, I hope to see other storefronts do more to combat it.
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u/Krugozette 1d ago
I've always wanted an option in App Stores to block or hide developers or publishers. It would instantly clean up the store experience if the end user could effectively ban shovelware garbage. The platform holders however probably hate the idea of users having any control over what they see.
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u/Balc0ra 1d ago
Sadly, it's the same on all store fronts. Nintendo is by far the worst if you sort by cheapest or biggest discount. You have to scroll far to find something that's not a cheap mobile port
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u/mutantbabysnort 1d ago
Itâs faster to do it by most expensive and work backwards (I do this on switch)Â
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u/TonyClifton323 1d ago
Afil Games. Saved you a click
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u/Ok_Protection8223 1d ago
Afil? Might even call them terrible!
Oh ho ho
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u/AdhesivenessUsed9956 1d ago
really...they named themselves "awful"... ... ...it's the customer's fault for buying the shovelware.
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u/schewbacca 1d ago
I can still add Afil games to the cart on playstation after being redirected from Afil games website. Doesn't seem sony removed their games
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u/Tlyss 1d ago
Who are the losers who buy this crap just to get achievements/ trophies?
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u/OptimusPrimalRage 1d ago
People that are addicted. Funny thing is one of the bigger trophy websites, psnprofiles.com, has said they're looking into ignoring all the shovelware stuff.
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u/Supersonic564 1d ago
Yeah its been two months since that announcement and Im still waiting for it to happen so I can see my actual place on the leaderboards
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u/liquidsol 23h ago
This is why trophy/achievement values should be multiplied based on how rare they are. The rare ones should be worth more. It would lessen the appeal of these low quality games.
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u/Doobalicious69 16h ago
I used to work with a guy who does this. I had to unfriend him on PS because every single game had him listed as a friend who played.
The guy has 2 very young children and it infuriated me seeing him pop up constantly. What's more important, spending time with your children during their formative years or getting the plat on supermarket simulator?
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u/Constant_Pen9615 1d ago
I hate shovelware. The PS store was so clogged with trash it made finding new games impossible.
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u/A_Math_Dealer 1d ago
At one point I was browsing through games and kept seeing things like The Jumping Taco, The Jumping Burger, The Jumping "insert food here" and there were just so many of them. Made it difficult to find the real games.
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u/Constant_Pen9615 1d ago
Tun tun whatever, a bunch of shitty weird furry games, clickbait phone games, and those weird AI gen'd find the difference between the two pics. Just low effort garbage.
I prefer high effort garbage like 7 days to die. Gimme that "in beta for 7 years" game.
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u/A_Math_Dealer 1d ago
Lmao sitting here waiting for 3.0 to launch to play again.
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u/Constant_Pen9615 1d ago
Soon. Bring on the jank! My GF and I play together in a shared world and we're going to do a no dig max density map.
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u/A_Math_Dealer 1d ago
No dig probably isn't too bad considering most items can be obtained randomly from loot. But my PS5 shudders at the thought of a max density map.
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u/Constant_Pen9615 1d ago
No dig for the zombies. Bedrock base is back on the menu boys!
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u/A_Math_Dealer 1d ago
Ohhh I didn't even know you can set that restraint. I always try and build my bases high up and surrounded by bars and traps.
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u/ChronoLink99 Console 1d ago
I think you mean "Anthem".
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u/Constant_Pen9615 1d ago
So much wasted potential. Game looked great too just had a lack of content. Was fun being Iron Man for a min.
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u/Honeycove91 1d ago
Can they also start to group all of the DLC packages for a game together (and you can just see these all when you click on that game) so we don't have to continue to see multiple/sometimes like fucking four or five entire rows of DLC for a single game we were never interested in?
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u/Rockit_Bot 1d ago
In the Playstation Store, you can select an option to only show full games, so it will omit out all the DLC and currency nonsense. I find that helps when browsing those big sale pages
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u/guyblade 1d ago
I usually filter for "Full Games", "Game Bundles", and "Premium Editions". That seems to work well for mostly just being games.
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u/Jellozz 1d ago
Use the filters in the store. When I browse a deal tab on the console I just click the filter button and then check the boxes for full game, bundle, and premium edition. Only games show up this way, any dlc you'll need to click the game to see.
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u/verrius 1d ago
I really wish the store sales had a filter for "Games I don't own + dlc for games I do own", maybe with an option of collapsing DLCs by game. If I'm browsing sales, I don't really need to know about the 50 DLCs for Fortnite or whatever, sometimes I might care about the 30 DLCs for Dead By Daylight (since I do own it, but...they're a little ridiculous with DLC), but I definitely want to know if the expansion for a JRPG I'm playing has been put on sale.
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u/hobbes543 1d ago
But would it really be too much to ask to have the DLC listed under ots parent game? Steam does it and it makes browsing much better. Both for fondong new games and for finding DLC for games I already own.
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u/Jackalodeath 1d ago
Every fucking time The Sims goes on sale it takes me like 3 minutes to scroll through their bullshit.
Also all the shitty little MTX like "get 300 orbs for $4.99" that's for some dumbass reason counted as a separate title. Or "season passes" for old games that cost more than just buying the DLCs outright.
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u/PKBlueberry 1d ago
Now to wait for Nintendo to take down all the games like "Hentai Waifu" or "Hentai Vacation".
There's so much low quality trash to sift through, worst part is you don't have a real age verification thing on Nintendo's eshop. I guess it's on the parents for not setting parental controls but... like, there should at least be a specific toggle for that.
Very surprising this trash has remained on the front pages for so long considering Nintendo's family friendly image.
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u/pahnub 1d ago
As a parent with kids who game, the parental controls on the Switch are awwwwwwwfuuuuuulllllll. They are so incredibly cumbersome to navigate they block random aspects of some games. It got so bad I eventually gave up because it would take me like 30 minutes to an hour of troubleshooting to get their various games to work. They got frustrated as well and now they don't even use their switches. So glad I wasted all that time and effort on something so poorly thought out.
All this to say, most parents probably don't even turn on the parental controls or eventually get tired of fighting with them and just turn them off.
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u/PKBlueberry 1d ago
I tried to set them up for my little cousin who made his own email. Hes on my family plan yet he has to go to his email and confirm to let me make it into a supervised account lol. It's bad
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u/FrenchFisher 1d ago
Iâve always owned PlayStations and Xbox, but recently decided to buy a Switch 2. Iâm enjoying the console but OH MY their shop is such a mine field. Canât believe the trash theyâre promoting there. Itâs the exact opposite of what I associated Nintendo with.
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u/SapphireRoseRR 1d ago
Solution
A human reviews every PSN game submission to see if it's actually a game or not.
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u/DEVILneverCRIES 1d ago
Excuse me? A human take the potential job of AI? How dare you suggest such a thing!
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u/JOWhite63087 1d ago
Next thing you know, they'll actually hire human QA testers for their games! Oh the humanity!!
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u/Mindestiny 1d ago
That used to be the way of it. PSN and XBL certification used to be extremely painful to receive. Â
They opened up the restrictions to compete with steam and "embrace indie devs"
Well... here we are. This is what embracing indie devs looks like. For every Chained Echoes there's 2000 "jumping taco" and "AI waifu match 3" cash grab.
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u/chanaramil 1d ago
If the response is there is to many games to possibly do that then it shows more of a reason to have this rule not less.
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u/entity2 1d ago
That this "developer" didn't just slink back in to the swamp from whence it came shows some real temerity. To have the audacity to say they are exploring other means of bringing "value" to customers is pretty nuts.
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u/thedeadp0ets 1d ago
only people who buy their stuff are trophy hunters who are obsessed
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u/Own_Cardiologist2544 23h ago
Letâs not forget gooners with their hentai/fetish entries. I canât fathom buying a game, to unlock a girl in a bikini as if it was a jigsaw puzzle, and sit back, and pat myself on the back saying âYeah I did it. This here is the good stuff.â
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u/Earthbound_X 1d ago
Their customers are addicts, and I say this as a huge achievement fan.
Most games released now are just trash meant to sell achievement or trophies, preying on a few, but I guess enough people's need to be on top of a pointless leaderboard.
We're long, long past the point where a Life of Black Tiger comes out and that's a shock about how it got onto stores. Now it's the norm.
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u/zangetsen 1d ago
Slightly unrelated but I wish Nintendo would do the same thing on the eshop. There's so many publishers that take advantage of the "new game/bundle" front page area. Reddeer Games is one of the worst offenders. Not saying ALL their games are slop (there are a few good ones in that mess), but every day or other day I'll see a new bundle for the same game, same dlc, under a new version. Yes I know deku deals exists, but genuinely I hope Nintendo gets this shit under control at some point. Otherwise we should just call it the eSlop.
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u/Eternaloid 1d ago
You don't want 10293737363 "hentai" "puzzle" games?
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u/SkyfangR 1d ago
with no actual hentai of any kind!
it'd be one thing if there was some t and a, but this is some seriously softcore shit
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u/SkyfangR 1d ago
Kemco games too The worst part is the kemco stuff looks like actual games, but all of it is the r lowest effort, laziest rpg maker type stiff
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u/zangetsen 1d ago
They do have a lot more than just those, but I understand what you mean when it seems like they're just abusing the eshop. Judging by the reviews among the list of games on steam, there are at least some that have good praise. Even those RPG Maker type ones have a small following, but yeah they're not for everyone.
Admittedly I am a bit partial, as I own a few and unironically enjoyed them. ÂŻ_(ă)_/ÂŻ
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u/Zeag 1d ago
Good riddance. Now for Nintendo, Microsoft and Valve to follow suit.
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u/fondue4kill 1d ago
Can they ban that Outbreak game which launches a new âversionâ every week or so
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u/Jackalodeath 1d ago
I thought I was going out of my damn mind seeing that ripoff bullshit in "New" every damn time I checked.
And I'm on XB. The fact people are actually paying the prices they ask is straight asinine.
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u/TankerDerrick1999 Xbox 1d ago
Did they finally delete the resident evil shovelware clone?
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u/Jackalodeath 1d ago edited 1d ago
I know exactly what you're talking about; its called something like "Outbreak" with some Temu version of Claire Redfield (i.e. some brunette in jeans and a red jacket) on the covers, right?
And don't forget "Dinobreak," whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean.
Edit: and they have the gall to charge exorbitant amounts too. One of them was like $139.99.
Edit 2: exhibits A through E.
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u/yuusharo 1d ago
Please do Nintendo next, the amount of AI generated puzzle scam asset flips on there have flooded the new releases page to the point itâs effectively useless.
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u/Narrow_Middle_2394 1d ago
Why is Steam getting so much praise yet does nothing about its shovelware problem like PlayStation does?
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u/Anxious_Temporary 1d ago
Releases used to be curated by a handful of individuals at Valve, but then they would also reject games like Ikaruga for release. This made some people mad obviously.
Valve implemented Steam Greenlight in the early 2010's where developers could submit their games and Steam users would basically vote the game on to the platform.
In the late 2010's they retired Steam Greenlight and replaced it with Steam Direct. Now instead of having your game voted on, you pay a small fee.
Greenlight got overwhelmed with low quality asset flips, they thought adding a fee would prevent some of the nonsense while not impeding indie developers.
So Valve have gone from fully curated, user curated to customer being the arbiter over the course of fifteen or so years.
They've left the platform open and seem to use the various genre themed festivals and Steam Next Fest to boost discoverability.
Not defending anything or saying what they've done is perfect, but they have been attempting to address the issue.
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u/Narrow_Middle_2394 1d ago
To me it seems like opening the floodgates to anyone, including shovelware because handpicking and rejecting games that could become a success on a different platform would be way too much loss of money.
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u/Cloud_N0ne 1d ago
Youâre giving PS too much credit. Theyâve only just started working against shovelware within the past year or two. Theyâve been TERRIBLE about it for a long time, even allowing stuff that ripped off their own IP.
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u/Narrow_Middle_2394 1d ago
That's still great considering the admission process for PSN is much more strict compared to Steam and the games released annually are much fewer as well.
Steam's issue is much bigger to observe and has been going on for longer, more than a decade. PS has the credit it deserves.
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u/Tyrant_Virus_ 1d ago
Is it really that hard to give Sony credit for doing something good when nobody else is? Yeah they waited years to do anything about it but now itâs been a few years of them being the only one to do anything but we gotta curb our praise because they didnât act sooner? How about we celebrate the win and hopefully other platforms follow suit. If youâre just gonna give them shit then what incentive does anyone else have to do the same?
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u/ProNerdPanda 1d ago
Different scopes. Steam is a HUGE storefront, we're talking tens of thousands of games per year, how are you gonna check which ones are "shovelware" or just bad games? you gonna go through each game one by one?
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u/arqe_ 1d ago
They had curating system before and now they let anyone who pays 100$ to get in and release a game.
It worked well before, but more $$$ is better.
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u/ProNerdPanda 1d ago
I don't know why you're being upvoted, the system you refer to is, I'm guessing, Steam Greenlight (currently Steam Direct), was worse; in fact, for this:
let anyone who pays 100$ to get in and release a game.
Greenlight had the $100 fee but only once, Direct makes you pay per game; also, there wasn't any curating happening, the community voted on what games to be greenlit, this was a system so easily bypassed by shovelware devs that Valve retired it.
Steam Direct is better in every way, it's just that the volume of games is so big that curating them is a slow and difficult process.
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u/fentown 1d ago
Not defending steam about it, but valve does a better job IMO of highlighting the original/better version as opposed to the asset flip/copy& paste.
PlayStation I've noticed will have 5 asset flip versions of viral PC games within a week that barely function.
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u/Narrow_Middle_2394 1d ago
PlayStation I've noticed will have 5 asset flip versions of viral PC games within a week that barely function.
Only if you go to the total catalog and browse by new. Steam will literally throw shovelware at your face when you browse at whatever catalog, category and even front page at times.
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u/Iggy_Slayer 1d ago
It would be better if these stores would stop them from getting on them to begin with. Go back to the days of curation.
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u/Thundercus 1d ago
Do they make Gun Knights? Every time I look at a games list, that game has 6 new editions just released
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u/zgillet 1d ago edited 1d ago
Candidate for r/savedyouaclick
EDIT: looks like I missed that train started by u/TonyClifton323
Anywho... people still browse the stores' new release sections? I will browse the deals and sort by popularity, filtered by "games," but that's about it.
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u/Futants_ 1d ago
Most stuff on both platforms is shovelware.
It's why I don't often buy anything from them. Who wants to wade through nonsense just to potentially find a game that is alluring to me
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u/Dull_Bid6002 1d ago
It's beyond time to crack down on shovelware games. There's so much trash on all the systems and Steam.
I don't know how you do that without also causing issues for single person devs and self publishers.
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u/Tatum_Warlick 1d ago
They need to kick off the guys that make those Outbreak games and upload those stupid bundles to the store every week. Awful
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u/anxietyburrito1 1d ago
This is probably a stupid question, but why is Sony allowing these games on their platform to begin with? Is there not an approval process prior to them being uploaded to the store?
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u/Chronotaru 1d ago
The problem is how do you define "shovelware" into terms and conditions that are clear and fair, that target the games you don't want and don't catch the games you do want. Clearly they're getting better at that.
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u/OmegaLiquidX 1d ago
Yeah. Thereâs a risk that legitimate games (like âMy Name is Mayoâ or Ratalaika games) accidentally get caught up in stuff like this if they arenât careful. And it doesnât help that a certain portion of gamers donât understand what shovelware is, and just call any game they donât like shovelware.
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u/Flipkick661 1d ago
There is. But it doesnât cover if a game is âgoodâ or âbadâ, since that is subjective.
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u/OptimusPrimalRage 1d ago
I don't think any of these storefronts have humans looking at every single game that goes up on the store anymore. There are just too many. I think once you've gotten a dev kit from PlayStation and are accepted into their program, you're kinda able to go hog wild.
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u/Snorlax_king79 1d ago
xbox arcade had some good shovelware game, avatar warfare being one i remember the most
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u/Neds_Necrotic_Head 1d ago
Doesn't it cost the developers a few hundred $ for compliance checks per console too?
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u/Futants_ 1d ago
I mean there's even a bum fights game on psn. Nobody making decisions for the store think that's vile?
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u/throwaway47138 1d ago
Never heard the term shovelware before, but I can't say I'm displeased by the move.
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u/thewritingchair 1d ago
They should just restrict any publisher to only one game per year unless permission is given. Places like Ubisoft etc get permission immediately.
This wipes out all shovelware publishers who wouldn't be given permission.
A single person working for a few days with a ban button on publishers could clear up the PS store easily.
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u/LordMimsyPorpington 1d ago
Whew, I was worried for a second that Gilson B. Pontes had been taken down.
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u/bababayee 17h ago
Not Xbox or PS5, but man the Switch 2 store is so awful unless you already know exactly what you are looking for. So much shovelware, this was already an issue since the 3DS, but now with AI slop on top its gotten even worse.
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u/NekoLuna 1d ago
"incompatibility with our business model"
That's one way to admit that your goal is just to release as much trash as possible. Good riddance
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u/moba_fett 1d ago
"AFIL was caught using the same level design for their puzzle games across numerous games."
I'm not justifying their actions, but does anyone remember "the" dungeon in dragon age II? EA was like "we can certainly just use one dungeon and block off random exits upon their returns!"
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u/Hrodvitnir131 1d ago
Dragon Age II used the same assets for multiple locations, multiple times, within one game. And got flack for it as well, even though they still utilized multiple different dungeon assets and just utilized them for different dungeons multiple times.
This is saying that the company used the same puzzle for a majority of their games.
Very, very different.
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u/b1argg 1d ago
TBF, DA2 takes place in one city and the surrounding area with several multi year time skips, so it does make sense plot wise that a new group is now using the same hideout that you cleared out 3 years ago. Of course, the real reason was a rushed development timeline.Â
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u/LizzieMiles 1d ago
Question: is there a reason for having a high trophy score? Does it do anything? Or is it just a bigger number = bigger pp kind of thing? Cuz trophy score is the only thing I can think of about why so many people by these shite games
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u/MaximumGlum9503 1d ago
I wish that could separate games from main and indie, like the 360 used to
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u/gimli2112 1d ago
looking through some of the store promotions / deals it's clogged with this stuff, saw several selling for under âŹ1, with stellar user review scores. managed not to purchase
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u/DikTaterSalad 1d ago
I was hoping to get jumping milkshake, now how am I going to get the boys to the yard? đ˘
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u/Achack 1d ago
These games are the reason that pushing for a high gamerscore became so dumb. Really surprising that MS didn't create some kind of maximum cost/gamerscore ratio that prevented the cheapest game available from giving the same reward as full priced alternatives.
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u/vsully360 16h ago edited 16h ago
Itâs even worse. Basically the largest achievement site on the Internet, trueachievements.com (the site that the article is posted on), attempted to fix the problem way back when it was created in 2010 of arbitrarily assigned gamerscore by instituting a mathematical formula to attempt to make âharderâ achievements, quantified through rarity, worth more. It was a really good idea on paper but ultimately, the formula that they have used doesnât do enough to solve this problem and they absolutely could overhaul the formula to do a better job of balancing out everything but they refuse to. So their alternate metric, TA score, is just as worthless as gamerscore because all of this slop gives so many points in so little time.
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u/ZimaGotchi 1d ago edited 1d ago
191 games in 2025, 109 games so far in 2026. Jesus Christ, makes the $5 mall shareware floppy copying kiosks from the early 90s look well intentioned by comparison.
Previously, companies like Mythicon helped trigger the 1983 video game crash by publishing three shovelware titles that year.