PlayStation gamers furious over abrupt shutdown of controversial service

Sony has just announced that their controversial service PlayStation Stars will be shutting down, and fans aren’t too happy with the PlayStation giant regarding their mishandling of the service.

In case you’ve never heard of it, and frankly that’s 100% Sony’s fault if you haven’t, PlayStation Stars is a sort of digital collectible platform that allows you to earn a bunch of special trophies by completing in-game challenges.

Thing is, nobody actually used it for that. By completing the challenges on the service, it was possible to earn some PlayStation Store credit

Bad luck if you’re only finding out about that now though, because Sony has revealed that the PlayStation Stars service will officially come to an end in July and they’re not accepting any new users from this point onwards.

Over on the r/PS5 subreddit in a thread reacting to the news, those that used the service are mostly just upset that it was implemented in such a poor way in the first place.

“Man, I absolutely loved getting points for simply buying something, and using those points to get digital credit so I can buy more stuff,” commented user Dreamweaver_duh.

“So I understand why they shut this down, but it was also the reason why I chose to buy things like V-Bucks or other DLC on PS5 than on other consoles.”

“I can't say I'm surprised. Both sides of the program were a mess… Not exactly a great way to build interest in the system,” replied user admiralvic.

“On the cash side, it basically didn't make sense to take anything besides cash. Games were priced 1:1 with their MSRP, so the only benefit was saving on tax. However, if the game was on sale it would lose that benefit. This, coupled with a small selection of games, just made it pointless to the overwhelming number of people. That said, I will miss it when it's gone.”

I think it is important to keep in mind that Sony did specifically state that they’re only shutting down the “current” version of PlayStation Stars in their announcement, so those of you that are worried about no longer being able to collect your NFT-esque collectibles may still get another chance in the future.

I do think whatever version of the service they relaunch will be a lot lighter on the free store credit stuff, however, so this is definitely a huge downer for anyone that was primarily using it to just save money.