How Can Sharing a Screenshot from the PS5 Be this Frustrating?

I’m GenX. I’ve been programming since I was 10. I’ve been programming professionally for 30 years now. I live with computers and software all day, every day. I am comfortable in macOS, Windows, and Linux. I want to share a couple of screenshots from my PS5 to Reddit. Seems simple, right? So how do I get them off the console, and onto a computer?

  • I see that I no longer have the option to upload to Twitter, which I had done before. (Has Sony officially joined the ranks of the He-Man Musk Haters Club? Or did Musk kill the API that Sony was using? Both possibilities seem equally likely.)
  • I also have YouTube, Discord, and Twitch accounts linked on the console. I have no options for sharing to any of these services either. What is the point of even having the option of linking them!? What is this doing other than just giving Sony permission to go fishing through those accounts?
  • I use the only option I see to upload them to the PS “app.” What is this doing for me? They don’t seem to be available anywhere on the Playstation website.
  • I install the PS+ app on Windows. It sticks for some time, so I kill it, only to see that Windows has hidden the UAE thing, so I never saw it. I try to install it again. It works.
  • I “sign in” to the PS+ app. I answer a stupid catcha, despite having 2FA on my account. Nothing happens.
  • I log in again. NOW I see my account. But I don’t see any way to access my screenshots. It’s just an ad page for a bunch of games that Sony should understand by now that I’m not interested in.
  • Grasping at straws, I install “Share Factory.” I shouldn’t need another application, but the name suggests possibilities… Aaand it’s a basic editor. Again, there doesn’t seem to be any way to get this media off the console. The only “sharing” option I see is to friend groups on the console. For this, it’s titled “‘Share’ Factory?” Are they serious?
  • I finally notice that the mobile PS app has the ability to look at my screenshots, and download them, but I don’t want to download them to the mobile device’s photo bank. I don’t want to allow the PS app access to my photos. I want to pull them to the PC, where I can more easily post them to Reddit.
  • At the end of all of this, the only option seems to be to put a USB memory stick in the console, and transfer media via sneakernet to my PC, like it was the 90’s all over again. The bottom line is that this seems — incredibly — to be the least amount of hassle to do what I want.

A rant on Reddit — before it was removed — surprise, surprise — confirms I’m not missing anything. I’m 54 years old. I live with bad apps and software and services like this every day, and I get sick of it. I have no idea how regular people are dealing with all of this “technology.” It makes no sense to me, and I’ve literally grown up with it. How can this be the best “we” can do here? Why aren’t we living in the future yet?

Playstation 5 and the “Control” Game Review

Control is a game that came free with Playstation Plus. I had heard relatively good things about it, but I know that PS+ games are the B- games that have run their course commercially, so I took this move with a grain of salt. Turns out that, like Red Dead Redemption 2, Control has a great game buried in there, underneath all the really terrible parts.

Control has a great X-Files-like vibe. Very atmospheric and moody. Very surreal and mysterious. It’s a great new intellectual property space. Or, at least, it will be, if Remedy ever makes another game based on the franchise. The story is great.

Control has an interesting gun play system. There’s no reloading, but there’s a pause while the gun reloads itself, so it’s all the same thing. Plus, the button that most games would use for reloading swaps between the 2 active weapon morphs in play, and muscle memory frequently leaves me hanging with the wrong weapon effect at the worst time.

That’s… about all the good I can say about it. I’m sure other people have done enough actual reviews, but I’ll give it a short run down:

  • The “control” points where you can start over if you die are far apart, and you have to walk a long way to get back to the point where you died.
  • The gun does NOT snap (by default), and the aim is unforgiving for a game like this.
  • There’s no crouching behind cover. Which is bizarre, because the enemies do it.
  • Optional missions come up at opportune moments, but you only get one shot at them. You have no idea what you’re facing, and if you die, and you simply lose out.
  • Finally, the map and the level design is horrendous, and there’s no pathing to help you navigate it.

I could chalk all the shooting mechanics up to taste, and put up with it for the story, but the last point just does the game in. I just tried the game again, and the ONLY way I can find to go forward to my objective is to go through an area that’s just too tough for me. I’ve failed to get through it twice, and there just didn’t seem to be a way to get it done. But I wandered around for 15 minutes, and concluded that this is, in fact, where I should be going, so I tried — and failed — for a third time, with literally no idea how I could deal with it.

I looked for a difficulty setting, and found that it has cheats. Well, that makes sense. So I activated them, and tried again. Despite aim snap, I was about to die for the 4th time, so I just went ahead and activated god mode. I got through the area, and found another control point, but there’s no where to go. Here’s what I see:

Control Ultimate Edition_20210214104514

And here’s what the map is showing me at that point:

Control Ultimate Edition_20210214104521

I don’t know where to go. I have an optional mission selected, and there’s no indication where that is. If I activate the “main” mission, the map indicator is in the ??? area to the northeast of my position. I cannot interpret what this is telling me, there’s no indication on how I can get where I need to go, and I can’t find any way through this section. I’m quite literally stuck, and I’m really tired of putting up with video games that force me to do a search and read some article to get past every other difficult part. At this point, I’m just going to delete the game, and hope that Sony gives Remedy access to the fact that this player quit playing the game at 18% completion, and uninstalled it, even though the game was free. That’s how big of a fail it is.

Tangentially, while trying to get the screenshots off the console, I found that it takes 4 non-obvious clicks to get to the media library, and there’s only one option for a service to upload the images with: Twitter. Really, Sony? Really? There must be a dozen prominent image sharing sites, and the only option is Twitter? Screw Twitter. Especially for sharing screenshots! And screw Sony for making that the only option. I had to resort to a USB stick. Ew.

Additionally, you can only share recorded video to YouTube or Twitter. You can only livestream to Twitch. Nothing about these options makes sense. Sony must expand these options with an update. I’m sure it’s all about the Benjamins. Sony was probably looking for kickbacks to include other services here, and no one donated, so they were forced to give us one option. Sony needs to suck it up, now that the console has launched, and move on. There’s no excuse for a lack of options for any of these ways of sharing. They need to make it like an iPhone, were you can connect your console to a service, and it becomes a “destination” to which you can share anything. (Well, I mean, they do, but they need to give us a lot more options.)