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[DryvBy]

There's no fanboy that should be able to defend this on any platform. The digital space has so much slop to sort through before you get to the good stuff. And then sometimes the slop has almost the identical cover art and screenshots of another popular game. I can't tell you how many times I've seen REPO or Chained Together clones on PSN over the past year. I've put a REPO clone in my cart before because it looked exactly like the PC game. What triggered me was the single player aspect.

On top of that, there's sometimes more interesting games that get put at the bottom for the endless amount of junk titles. There's stuff that's actually good that gets buried in the middle of it all. Even on PC, sometimes I have to just wishlist something I want so I'll know when its available because there'll be 100 other random dollar store titles before that one releasing on the same day.

 

[Connificent]

Just browse the most popular/sold categories

 

[DryvBy]

Just browse the most popular/sold categories

That would be fine, but sometimes there's less popular retro stuff that might have been ported to Steam or PSN/XB/Switch that you'd miss too. I hate these stores. And there's way too many AI releases these days.

 

[FeralEcho]

There's no QA anymore in this industry,even on AAA games, that's why we get so many broken buggy messes,so we shouldn't be surprised it's come to this. The sooner we're gonna start holding these platform holders to higher standards by not defending every asanine decision they make the sooner things will improve.

Until then the bootlickers that keep defending these companies will keep making things worse for everyone!

 

[Kilau]

I blame Tim Epic for suing Tim Apple and now I have to sort through a hundred "hentai" games on the eShop sale list.

 

[Guilty_AI]

honestly never had any of these issues in any PC store, be steam, GOG or itch io. You can always sort by popularity or rating to filter out scam stuff then further filter things out with tags.

Like, "atmospheric, dungeon crawler, released in 2025, but nothing 2D, games only (to exclude demos)"? There you go:

https://steamdb.info/stats/gameratings/2025/?tagid=1720%2C4166

right away you can come across a whole bunch of interesting stuff and potential hidden gems

Heck, i just found out about this Pale Abyss as i did this test, and adding it to my library as i write this

 

[lifa-cobex]

I treat it the same way I did in Blockbuster.
You've got your few shelves of blockbusters.
A load of shelves of films that came out 5+ years ago.
Then you have that corner of just straight to TV films that no one ever goes to.

Music was the same in HMV too.

It is what it is.

 

[DryvBy]

honestly never had any of these issues in any PC store, be steam, GOG or itch io. You can always sort by popularity or rating to filter out scam stuff then further filter things out with tags.

Like, "atmospheric, dungeon crawler, released in 2025, but nothing 2D, games only (to exclude demos)"? There you go:

https://steamdb.info/stats/gameratings/2025/?tagid=1720%2C4166

right away you can come across a whole bunch of interesting stuff and potential hidden gems

Heck, i just found out about this Pale Abyss as i did this test, and adding it to my library as i write this

That's fine and all unless you're like me and play practically everything under the sun and just like seeing what's popped up new. An example, I'd be excited if they put Interstate '76 on Steam one day and I missed an announcement. A good way to discover it is wait for the release days of games and check out the what's new. But that feature is stupid since there's so much shovelware. And I can't sort by popular because Interstate '76 may not be the popular to others.

Even ignoring the sorting and filters, there's so many carbon copy games that this doesn't help, and they all use similar art. So if you wanted to play Chained Together but accidentally Chain Together, you have to take extra steps to get that crap off your library. It's absolutely busted how the stores operate.

 

[Labadal]

There's a crazy amount of titles on all shops, it's not even funny. Try to find some curators that align with your tastes. Maybe find someplace that writes about the genre you like. I no longer buy many AAA games. Mostly South East Asian and indie games. I basically research on my own these days. (Plus said recommended methods.)

 

[R6Rider]

It's fucking annoying and pathetic seeing so much slop being allowed on the stores. PSN especially. So much AI asset flip trash.

 

[Revolutionary]

I couldn't believe what I was seeing when I opened up the eShop on my brand new Switch 2: slop as far as the eye can see.

But hey, at least the store isn't laggy anymore...

 

[March Climber]

There are sites currently being made to tackle this issue, like Tastedive, but they are still in their beginning stages so their problems haven't been ironed out yet.

My suggestion for now is to either ask online communities for specific genre suggestions or to use the category function in search to the best of your ability.

There's also a few curation youtubers out there who make good curated lists:

xPlayNation

This channel is about Best High Quality 4K 60FPS Gameplay Walkthrough Guide of Best new games, Solving games Puzzles & Riddles, Showing Locations of Puzzle Solutions, Keys and many more about Gaming. All Video of Gameplays are played by me with my voice over commentary explanation guide, that is...

youtube.com

Best Indie Games

Discover awesome Indie Games! This channel highlights fantastic indie games since they are wonderful (if often overlooked) experiences which I want to share! Subscribe to keep up with the world of Indie Gaming, on the best games available right now & promising upcoming titles. This is a...

youtube.com

Gaming In The Wild

Mellow game chat. Also a podcast. There's a Patreon!

youtube.com

Down to Top

Down to top is a channel for those who wants news related to Android & iOS games, We are regularly uploading the High Quality Video Content related to Android & iOS Games, We also give the information about game's graphics, size, & whether it is offline or online, ------------ So never miss the...

youtube.com

gameranx

We make videos about video games. Enjoy our Top 10s, the Friday news show, Before You Buy reviews and first impressions, and more.

youtube.com

Push Square

Welcome to Push Square, your one stop destination for all things PlayStation. Here you can expect new content each week from Aaron, including reviews, lists, let's plays, guides and and all the latest the world of PlayStation has to offer. But, of course, the big question remains... Do you...

youtube.com

GamingBolt

This is the Official Youtube Channel of GamingBolt.com. Subscribe for daily original content including reviews, tech analysis and lists!

youtube.com

Edit: Also, a fun drinking game for the thread, take a shot anytime someone says the word slop.

 

[SILKYSMOOTH30FPS]

Was never an issue for me because i only buy physical on consoles and on pc i just type the name of the title and buy it. Never randomly swimming in the sea of slop to find something.

 

[SILKYSMOOTH30FPS]

There are sites currently being made to tackle this issue, like Tastedive, but they are still in their beginning stages so their problems haven't been ironed out yet.

My suggestion for now is to either ask online communities for specific genre suggestions or to use the category function in search to the best of your ability.

Edit: Also, a fun drinking game for the thread, take a shot anytime someone says the word slop.

Slop is a perfect word to describe worthless garbage. The best introduction of a word into the game sphere we've ever gotten. Thank you for whoever introduced SLOP into our lives.

 

[Guilty_AI]

That's fine and all unless you're like me and play practically everything under the sun and just like seeing what's popped up new. An example, I'd be excited if they put Interstate '76 on Steam one day and I missed an announcement. A good way to discover it is wait for the release days of games and check out the what's new. But that feature is stupid since there's so much shovelware. And I can't sort by popular because Interstate '76 may not be the popular to others.

It's on GOG

Interstate ’76® The Arsenal

It's 1976... a different '76. Stretched out before you are thousands of miles of desert -

www.gog.com

You don't check the release store page everyday, just throw it on google or you prefered store whenever it comes up in your mind to see if anything new came up

Even ignoring the sorting and filters, there's so many carbon copy games that this doesn't help, and they all use similar art. So if you wanted to play Chained Together but accidentally Chain Together, you have to take extra steps to get that crap off your library. It's absolutely busted how the stores operate.

I honest to god can't find a game called "Chain Together", Chained Together is all that comes up instead no matter where i put it. I'm not sure if this is just an hypothetical example.

 

[March Climber]

Slop is a perfect word to describe worthless garbage. The best introduction of a word into the game sphere we've ever gotten. Thank you for whoever introduced SLOP into our lives.

That's 2 more shots.

 

[Kenneth Haight]

Sony

 

[LakeOf9]

Yeah it's insane how bad it has gotten. Some curation, I am begging you all, please.

 

[ReBurn]

I rarely see it unless I sort by price low to high.

 

[rm082e]

I hear people complain about this stuff, but it doesn't bother me. I'm typically hearing about a game from outside a storefront, then going to search for it. I've not had an issue with multiple titles of similar name and cover art trying to trick me into buying something.

 

[DryvBy]

There are sites currently being made to tackle this issue, like Tastedive, but they are still in their beginning stages so their problems haven't been ironed out yet.

My suggestion for now is to either ask online communities for specific genre suggestions or to use the category function in search to the best of your ability.

There's also a few curation youtubers out there who make good curated lists:

xPlayNation

This channel is about Best High Quality 4K 60FPS Gameplay Walkthrough Guide of Best new games, Solving games Puzzles & Riddles, Showing Locations of Puzzle Solutions, Keys and many more about Gaming. All Video of Gameplays are played by me with my voice over commentary explanation guide, that is...

youtube.com

Best Indie Games

Discover awesome Indie Games! This channel highlights fantastic indie games since they are wonderful (if often overlooked) experiences which I want to share! Subscribe to keep up with the world of Indie Gaming, on the best games available right now & promising upcoming titles. This is a...

youtube.com

Gaming In The Wild

Mellow game chat. Also a podcast. There's a Patreon!

youtube.com

Down to Top

Down to top is a channel for those who wants news related to Android & iOS games, We are regularly uploading the High Quality Video Content related to Android & iOS Games, We also give the information about game's graphics, size, & whether it is offline or online, ------------ So never miss the...

youtube.com

gameranx

We make videos about video games. Enjoy our Top 10s, the Friday news show, Before You Buy reviews and first impressions, and more.

youtube.com

Push Square

Welcome to Push Square, your one stop destination for all things PlayStation. Here you can expect new content each week from Aaron, including reviews, lists, let's plays, guides and and all the latest the world of PlayStation has to offer. But, of course, the big question remains... Do you...

youtube.com

GamingBolt

This is the Official Youtube Channel of GamingBolt.com. Subscribe for daily original content including reviews, tech analysis and lists!

youtube.com

Edit: Also, a fun drinking game for the thread, take a shot anytime someone says the word slop.

I intentionally used slop as much as I could stomach it because I wanted the reader to feel disgust.

 

[DryvBy]

It's on GOG

Interstate ’76® The Arsenal

It's 1976... a different '76. Stretched out before you are thousands of miles of desert -

www.gog.com

You don't check the release store page everyday, just throw it on google or you prefered store whenever it comes up in your mind to see if anything new came up


I honest to god can't find a game called "Chain Together", Chained Together is all that comes up instead no matter where i put it. I'm not sure if this is just an hypothetical example.

Example: https://platprices.com/search.php?q=chained

And that's just one. There's like 15 different Schedule I clones on PSN too.

 

[Zacfoldor]

Truth is we are always having some sort of agenda pushed on us. You know what game got the ass end of the stick? Braid Anniversary Edition.

Whatever you think of the original game today(and wow has time changed the general consensus on this one) the Anniversary edition was solid. It seemed to me that I had to work to find it organically. It was way down in the listings and got totally shunned on PSN. I'm guessing that this was intentional as for some reason or another Jonathan Blow is hated badly by everyone that I can think of in the industry. I'm pretty sure this game got intentionally blacklisted somehow.

Another game that got the fuck fuck treatment, this time by Amazon, was stellar blade. There was a time when many were hoping for Stellar Blade to fail and prove that modern audiences would reject it. We were uncertain how it would play out. During this time Amazon(imho) seemed to block the game from showing up when you typed in PS5 or PS5 games, when virtually every other game would appear. IIRC even if you typed in Stellar Blade, nothing came up. Several days were like this and others were able to repeat it.

I tested it just now in an incognito window and it is still fucked up for me(though after much testing just now I am able to get the game to be listed by typing "PS5 game stellar blade" which iirc was not possible for me very early on. It is very difficult to be certain when amazon customized their experience BUT you get a feel for how games are supposed to be listed and it sets off red flags when this isn't as expected. Especially for a politicized game like this one was. If you type in Stellar Blade it brings up the Windows digital code but not the PS5 game. See if you can type in a search term on an incognito windows amazon in the us and have the US version of stellar blade for PS5 come up. If you are brainstorming on why this might be, do understand that I noticed this before launch, repeated the results across multiple PCs, networks, isps, and had users on the net test and repeat them and it is not yet fixed. There is a listing for it but there is some sort of adult filter happening in the search results for some users AND over time I also noticed the game showing up when performing more adult oriented searches on amazon but can't be bothered to remember them:

Amazon.com: Stellar Blade - PlayStation 5 : Sony Playstation: Video Games

Amazon.com: Stellar Blade - PlayStation 5 : Sony Playstation: Video Games

www.amazon.com

 

[Killer8]

We need more elitism in game development. The barrier to entry has become too low.

 

[GriffinCorp]

I was thinking the same thing on the PSN store, its a hot mess. Xbox does a much better job sorting and they have video/photos of most games. Not sure why PS is behind but sorting is a chore and you see millions of shovelware games. Real games but not.

 

[TintoConCasera]

Can't you sort it yourself? Stuff like categories, filters and so on must be present on those stores, no?

 

[The Cockatrice]

No issues with Steam, but yeah the PSN store is trash, but then again, if you own both a PC and a PS5 theres not much to play on PS5 other than the big names which are easy to find, so again, not a huge issue. If you're a PS only user than I guess it sucks looking for quality obscure indies and whatnot.

 

[EverydayBeast]

First online gaming stores I used, loved their approach back than, now you see so much junk.

 

[Famipan]

Yes PSN is a wreck these days. That's why I gave up on browsing their sales since I rather use Steam and their curators.

Half of the games on PSN shouldn't be there at all.

As a non-English speaker, their forced ugly messed up auto-translation I can't permanently opt out from is what bothers me the most though. Changing store to English just lasts until you exit the store

 

[Danjin44]

Unfortunately thats true for both PSN and Eshop, thankfully for me 90% of the games I buy are physical and even when I do buy digital (when there is no physical version) I already know what I'm getting from the beginning.

 

[Famipan]

I rarely see it unless I sort by price low to high.

Problem is there are a few good dirt cheap games which get drowned in the cheap sorting. Such as Figment which I'm enjoying now.

Main problem though is we cannot save many titles to wish list. So there is no reason to browse the cheap stuff in the store if you don't plan to spontaniously buy everything interesting you see on sale there.
Steam has maybe infinite storage for their wish list so I can just check that directly.

 

[DryvBy]

No issues with Steam, but yeah the PSN store is trash, but then again, if you own both a PC and a PS5 theres not much to play on PS5 other than the big names which are easy to find, so again, not a huge issue. If you're a PS only user than I guess it sucks looking for quality obscure indies and whatnot.

There's absolutely problems with Steam and every store. The Steam store is much nicer but it's full of hentai visual novels, asset flip games, and other crap. I could block visual novels but then I'd lose the few I enjoy. Sometimes I don't know what to want to look for, I just want to go to the store and browse. GOG is the same way but I find GOG to be one of the best digital stores because you can find retro stuff easier with dates that are accurate.

Going to New Releases shouldn't be flooded on any store with the absolute garbage they have up. They need a filter for these stores of games that aren't just popular but maybe what's related to stuff in your interest up front and the other crap at the bottom.

 

[The Cockatrice]

There's absolutely problems with Steam and every store. The Steam store is much nicer but it's full of hentai visual novels, asset flip games, and other crap. I could block visual novels but then I'd lose the few I enjoy. Sometimes I don't know what to want to look for, I just want to go to the store and browse. GOG is the same way but I find GOG to be one of the best digital stores because you can find retro stuff easier with dates that are accurate.

Going to New Releases shouldn't be flooded on any store with the absolute garbage they have up. They need a filter for these stores of games that aren't just popular but maybe what's related to stuff in your interest up front and the other crap at the bottom.

You can ignore all the trash steam has by tags so you can never see hentai or whatever you dont like ever. So yeah it has no issues. There are also mods to make it even more customizable.

 

[Shadowstar39]

There's no QA anymore in this industry,even on AAA games, that's why we get so many broken buggy messes,so we shouldn't be surprised it's come to this. The sooner we're gonna start holding these platform holders to higher standards by not defending every asanine decision they make the sooner things will improve.

Until then the bootlickers that keep defending these companies will keep making things worse for everyone!

Problem is gaming is now has global hegemony. Along with a multi generational digital market. This means more people will just buy whatever looks good or cheap. It's why f2p GaaS is so popular. Back in the day the pool of customers was smaller. They had to curate.

No clue what the solution is.

 

[LavitzSlambert]

Truth is we are always having some sort of agenda pushed on us. You know what game got the ass end of the stick? Braid Anniversary Edition.

Whatever you think of the original game today(and wow has time changed the general consensus on this one) the Anniversary edition was solid. It seemed to me that I had to work to find it organically. It was way down in the listings and got totally shunned on PSN. I'm guessing that this was intentional as for some reason or another Jonathan Blow is hated badly by everyone that I can think of in the industry. I'm pretty sure this game got intentionally blacklisted somehow.

I personally didn't think Braid needed a remake, so much as Blow needed money. Was it hidden because a lack of interest or did it actually get blacklisted? I wouldn't be surprised if it just didn't hit the right notes to get picked up by the recommendation algorithm.