If you're a PlayStation trophy hunter and you want to acquire lots of trophies, you've probably heard about the many shovelware trophy spam games out there. Basically, these are cheap games sold on the PlayStation Store that award easy Platinum Trophies for players. According to DEX.EXE, a letter has been sent out to developers stating that "spam" or "repetitive" content in the store will be delisted, excluded from merchandising, or restricted. Basically, it looks like Sony is going scorched earth on shovelware that offers cheap and easy ways for players to trophy spam, which is great news.
A good example of how bad the trophy spam has become is this 5-minute walkthrough of a "game" by the name of The Tiger T. Basically, the player holds down R1 while earning trophies, eventually resulting in a Platinum trophy. You can currently buy the game on the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 for $1.99 Canadian dollarydoos. You'd think that this wouldn't result in many sales, but for those who want to pad their trophies it's apparently a good buy, as it has over 10,000 owners.
As you can see, these trophy spam titles aren't using the PlayStation trophy system to improve the overall experience. It definitely isn't something neat and interesting like how Google Stadia was using achievements. Instead, The Tiger T and hundreds of shovelware titles like it are clogging up the PlayStation Store and making it difficult for users to find games they actually want to play.
Webnetic, the developer behind The Tiger T, has over 150 PlayStation titles that are very similar to The Tiger T. They aren't the only ones doing this either, which is why it's nice to see that Sony will suspend or even terminate PlayStation Partners accounts that submit garbage like The Tiger T.
While this is indeed great news, it does cast a shadow on Nintendo's eShop, which is absolutely chock full of shovelware. Will Nintendo take the same steps that Sony has done? Hopefully sooner rather than later.
For more information on PlayStation trophy spam and Sony's attitude towards it, stay tuned to TechRaptor.
