PlayStation users concerned about potentially game-changing update

A new PlayStation patent has fans concerned about difficulty settings in future games.

PlayStation is reportedly making some big changes to the user experience of its games, in an attempt to make them more accessible.

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There’s no denying that video games are more accessible to the masses than ever before, after all, you’ve got plenty of choices when it comes to consuming the latest AAA or indie gems. Whether you’re into high-end PCs, casual console gaming on the Xbox Series X/S and PS5, or prefer gaming on the go with a Nintendo Switch, you’ve got plenty of options to enjoy the luxury of video games.

However, a heavily debated part of the game industry is the difficulty of games, and a new patent from PlayStation seems to be pitching a solution to the debate, possibly at the cost of player enjoyment.

An excerpt from the latest patent reads: “The collected data may be evaluated to identify whether a user gaming performance level corresponds to an expected level of performance. When the user gaming performance level does not correspond to an expected level of performance, parameters that change the difficulty of the game may be changed automatically.”

Now while it doesn’t explicitly say it, this patent does imply that video game difficulty could be adjusted automatically in future games.

In practice this would mean if you’re continuously dying during a particularly challenging gameplay segment, the game will adapt and change to make things slightly easier for you. On the flip side, if you’re flying through a game, adjustments could be made to knock you down a peg and make you try a little bit harder.

Again, in practice, it sounds pretty good, as long as you can turn it off and favour manual difficulty settings. If it’s more akin to the controversial skill-based matchmaking of online games, the new patent could run the risk of infuriating players rather than doing them any favours.

It’s currently unknown how PlayStation plans to use the patent in future games, or if it plans to use it at all.