Report Investigates Why PS5's Store Is Still Drowning in 'Eslop' | Push Square
Stop us if you've heard this one before, but the PS Store is a complete mess, full of low-effort «simulator» games boasting AI-generated artwork and misleading gameplay claims. It's gotten so bad that (we'll say it) more legitimate games are getting bumped from the front page every day, and Sony has seemingly been asleep at the wheel for months (even years) now.
Not convinced? We invite you to click around on the PS Store's «Games to Wishlist» page; exceptionally bleak stuff, full of what we would have thought was actionable plagiarism (excepting Onimusha: Warlords, it was never our intent for our based Capgod to catch strays).
IGN's Rebekah Valentine gets today's journalism gold star, delving into this seedy world of samey cash grabs with a massively detailed piece. Both Kotaku and Aftermath have looked at this issue from various angles, but part of the problem is that shady developers/publishers have become very good at remaining unaccountable, and Sony is allowing it to continue. These shadowy studios continue to endlessly pump out these games, and as content creator Dead Domain discovered, they are almost impossible to track down, with either non-existent, outdated, or incorrect business and contact information.
The piece covers the process of submitting a game to Sony for certification, a process which is commonly misunderstood by gaming audiences. Speaking to a number of indie and AAA publishers, Valentine was told: «A common misconception amongst The Gamers™ and even inexperienced devs is this is tantamount to a QA check. This is incorrect; it is the responsibility of the developer/publisher before submission. The platforms ensure the game's code complies with hardware specifications.»
Valentine was told that while Nintendo and Xbox review all changes to store pages before they go live, PlayStation does one quick check pre-launch. Worse, the punishment for publishing false or misleading information on the PS Store? Usually, offenders are just asked to replace
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