UPDATED: We’ve been informed that the developer has actually removed the game rather than Sony to rethink the game’s title. We’ve reached out to the developer to find out if this is true. So, we may see this back on the PlayStation Store after all!
ORIGINAL: Sony’s quality control procedure for allowing developers to launch PS4 games onto the PlayStation Network has been a topic of debate since the PlayStation platform became more open and indie developers were invited to self-publish their games.
There’s defintely been some indie gems, but also a spate of shoddy digital PS4 games cropping up on the PlayStation Store. Life of Black Tiger, The Deer God and Skylight Freerange 2 are just three of the titles to trigger the alert button and get gamers questioning whether Sony exercises any sort of quality control at all when it comes to actually checking the content.
The latest dodgy PS4 game to sneak onto the Store to attract much unneeded attention is 1000 Rated, a game that claims to offer the fastest Platinium Trophy. Blatantly aimed at PlayStation Trophy hunters, 1000 Rated is little more than a series of 1,000 tiled pictures that you have to re-arrange in order, and cost under $1 to buy.
What is even more suspicious about this game is that each puzzle required exactly the same movement of the tiles in each of its three difficulty levels. So, once you had solved one puzzle, as long as you had written down the solution, you could breeze through the others. Some gamers who downloaded 1000 Rated claim to have unlocked the PS4 Trophy within 20 minutes!
1000 Rated quickly became a topic of debate on gaming forums yesterday, and while some gamers seemed to be excited that they could add another trophy to their collection at a low cost and rather quickly, most were surprised that a game of this quality had made it onto the Store at all. It seems like Sony caught on quickly to this chatter and reviewed 1000 Rated because it’s now been completely removed from the store. But, how did a low quality game that must have taken some kid a matter of hours to knock up get onto the PlayStation Store in the first place?
It’s clear to us that there needs to be another system in place so games such as this don’t get the green light in the first place. Perhaps a selected panel of 1,000 PlayStation gamers who get to play the game first and then can vote, or a panel of gaming professionals that make the ultimate decision on which games can launch on the PlayStation Network and which ones should be trashed.