Sony drops PS5 Accolades because of low player use, no support, and bad UI

Sony has discontinued PS5 Accolades — a feature that awarded players small tokens in multiplayer games like Rainbow Six Siege, Call of Duty, and Sackboy A Big Adventure for being a good teammate.

Sony is about to remove a PS5 console feature that was integrated at launch — Accolades. Despite being used in games like Rainbow Six Siege, Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War, and Sackboy A Big Adventure, the rewards system to showcase good player behaviour never quite took off.

PS5 bad UI and lack of implementation kills Accolades feature

PlayStation is discontinuing accolades, much to this Good Sport's chagrin

The PlayStation website announced the news, which was spotted by the eagle-eyed PushSquare. Launched with the console, PS5 games were able to integrate a system where players could award each other with small accolades in four categories: Helpful, Good Sport, Welcoming, or Leadership. However, not all games implemented the feature and there was no palpable reward for earning them. Plus, the Accolades menus were tucked away in the horrific early PS5 UI, and they didn't feature prominently anywhere in your public space.

The announcement of the discontinuation said the following: "In fall of 2022, the Accolades feature on PlayStation 5 will no longer be supported. The feature hasn’t seen the level of usage we anticipated, so we are refocusing our efforts. We encourage the community to continue to send positive messages to one another."

PS Accolades' weird menu tucked away on the PS5

This isn't really that surprising, as we could only think of a handful of games that used it. Indeed, using them didn't earn you any Rainbow Six Siege trophies, Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War trophies, or Sackboy A Big Adventure trophies — so what was the point? Often, its integration was hard to even find, which is a shame because it is a good idea in principle. Hopefully, PlayStation Stars makes some kind of positive messaging system available to players.

Did you ever use accolades? Would you like to see it return in some way? Can you think of any PS4 games or PS3 games on PS Plus that uses a similar system in game? Overwatch comes to mind, but that also had Accolade integration squirrelled away. Let us know in the comments!

Hardware PlayStation 5

Written by Kes Eylers-Stephenson

Editor Kes is our resident expert in PlayStation and other gaming news. He writes about PS5 exclusives like The Last of Us and Horizon, PS Plus news, and his favorite games — The Witcher, Assassin’s Creed, and God of War — before an evening swim.