Have you ever played a video game that you’d be embarrassed to be associated with? Maybe you were curious about a title that received poor reviews. Or, perhaps a friend or significant other launched a less-than-savory title under your name. If you’re a trophy hunter, there are even more reasons why you might want to hide achievements.
In this article, you will learn how to hide trophies and games on your PlayStation account. We also discuss the reasons why you may or may not want to do so.
Table of Contents
What Are Hidden Trophies?
There are two different types of hidden trophies: ones that are hidden by game developers, and ones that are hidden by players.
Most commonly, hidden trophies are achievements whose requirements are intentionally obscured by game developers to avoid spoilers. To see the description of these trophies on your gaming console, you must opt in on the relevant page.
The second type may be initiated by players on their PlayStation console. These trophies are hidden from a user’s account, and therefore will not show on your trophy list when viewed by a third-party. By hiding trophies on your PlayStation account, you can curate what video game titles appear on your trophy list for others to see.
For the purposes of this article, we will be focusing on hidden trophies that players have control over.
How Do You Hide Trophies?
PlayStation 5
- Turn on your PlayStation 5 console.
- View the trophy list for any video game you own.
- Press the “Options” button.
- Click on Privacy Settings >> Hidden Games >> Hide your games from other players.
- Toggle whichever titles you’d like to hide.
- Earn a trophy in any game on your account.
- Sync your trophies to the PlayStation Network.
- Update your account on PSN Profiles or any trophy hunting website of your choice.
PlayStation 4
- Turn on your PlayStation 4 console.
- Go to Settings >> Account Management >> Privacy Settings >> Gaming Media >> Hidden Games.
- Toggle whichever titles you’d like to hide.
- Earn a trophy in any game on your account.
- Sync your trophies to the PlayStation Network.
- Update your account on PSN Profiles or any trophy hunting website of your choice.
If you change your mind later, you can always unhide trophy lists later by clicking the toggle again.
Should You Hide Trophies?
Reasons to Hide Trophies
There are plenty of reasons why a player would consider hiding trophies from their PlayStation account. More serious trophy hunters are likely to have even greater justifications for doing so.
Unobtainable Trophies
Impossible achievements are among trophy hunters’ worst fears. As more time passes, the list of unobtainable trophies only seems to increase. With the growing bubble of live service multiplayer games seemingly reaching terminal velocity in recent years, it stands to reason that this trend will only get worse from here on. Incredibly high budget games like Concord attempting to break-in to this market frequently find little success, and resolve to mitigate their losses by taking their servers permanently offline.
While ending support for a failing game is generally the best move to make given the circumstances, it nevertheless leads to many unfortunate outcomes. Negative public sentiment, the title becoming lost media, and sunk costs without any hope for recuperation are among the most prevalent consequences.
Trophy hunters are frequent victims of these events. If players haven’t earned all of a game’s trophies before service ends, they very likely never will. That means trophy hunters will be stuck with an incomplete trophy list on their profile until the end of time.
Not to mention the myriad other ways that games can make their trophies unobtainable. Limited time modes, broken or bugged achievements, and entire games getting removed from store shelves can all make it impossible to earn a game’s trophies.
If you’re someone who has been impacted by any of these circumstances and finds the affected title’s inclusion on your profile to be disturbing, you would benefit from hiding their trophies.
Personal Grievances
Have you ever played a game that appalled you? Whether due to a mind-boggling decision from the writing team or its treatment of social issues, not every game is going to jive with every player. And, even if a video game didn’t make any obvious blunders in your eyes, you might just be genuinely apathetic about the experience.
Either way, you probably don’t want to dedicate even more hours of your life to a game you don’t love. If the perceived slight is extreme, you probably don’t want to be associated with the game, either.
If earning a platinum trophy is the highest compliment you can offer to a game, then removing all evidence you played it is likely to send the opposite message. This can be made even more effective if you go a step further and refund the game or trade it in with a local retailer.
Accused of Cheating
Trophy hunting leaderboard websites like PSN Profiles have rules you must follow if you want to compete. One of the most important tenets is that you must not use any third-party software or tool to unlock trophies in a game.
If you get caught, any suspicious trophies get flagged and you get temporarily removed from the leaderboard. To gain access to the leaderboard again, you must either plead your case with the moderation team or hide the game in question from your profile. If three different games get flagged, you will be permanently removed from the leaderboard.
Reformed cheaters who have seen the error in their ways will inevitably want to hide trophies they’ve hacked from their profile. However, even honest players can sometimes get caught up in a dispute.
Buggy trophies can unlock in unnatural ways, making it seem as though achievements were earned out of order. Not connecting older consoles to the internet can also lead to incorrect time stamps on trophies earned during a session. Perhaps most concerningly, players can enter online multiplayer game lobbies with a cheater, who automatically unlocks their trophies without their consent.
If you lack proof of your innocence or are the unwitting victim of a hacker, you may need to hide the relevant trophies from your profile.
Avoid Criticism
Many novice trophy hunters take their newfound hobby to extreme levels before realizing what makes earning achievements worthwhile. These players often become fully immersed in unlocking trophies for dozens of shovelware titles before realizing they’ve been fooled. After a certain point, these players realize they’re spending their hard-earned money for work, not play.
Even if leaderboard rankings matter to you, you’d have to earn thousands of platinum trophies to stand a chance at the highest level. Never mind the fact that you would have to maintain an insane pace to hold your ranking long-term.
Trophy hunters who started on the wrong foot but have since seen the light might be embarrassed about what their trophy hunting profile says about them. If you want to start with a clean slate but don’t want to start a whole new profile to do so, hiding these games might be a better option.
Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Hide Trophies
Although there are several convincing reasons why players might consider hiding their trophies, that doesn’t always mean they should. Every argument has a counterargument, however well-reasoned it may be. Hiding trophies on your PlayStation account can also lead to some negative outcomes.
Adds a Mark to Your Profile
On PSN Profiles, any player who hides trophies on their PlayStation account automatically gets a mark added to their page. Any person who views your profile can see that you have hidden trophies, but not the details behind how many or which games were impacted. In the above screenshot, it is designated with an “H.” As a point of comparison, I have not hidden any trophies on my account, XxDragon-DCxX, thus the “H” is not present in the banner.
It’s a small mark that can easily be missed if you’re not aware of it. You will have to decide for yourself whether removing certain trophies from your list is worth adding a potentially unsightly mark on your profile.
Others May Assume the Worst
Since other trophy hunters can tell when you’ve hidden achievements from your profile, it’s a given that they may have their own opinion about it. Unfortunately, there’s no way for you to plead your case to a casual observer.
As a result, some members of the community are bound to assume the worst about you. Regardless of your reasons, you may simply appear to be another cheater in their eyes. If any potential hit to your reputation bothers you, you may be better off leaving games on your list rather than hiding them.
After all, earning the platinum trophy in Pretty Girls Panic! is one thing, but being lumped in with hackers is another.
Removes Authenticity
A trophy hunter’s profile is a window into their gaming journey. At a glance, a person can tell how committed a player is to trophy hunting, what genre they enjoy, their favorite experiences, and which title has caught their attention at present.
However, when a person hides tons of trophies from their account, they are essentially erasing parts of their history to create a perfectly sanitized version of themselves to show the world. It’s a shame, because even incomplete lists convey a lot of personality.
When you see a trophy hunter who earns a platinum trophy in a shovelware title on the occasion, you can tell they are measured in their choices. When you see incomplete trophy lists, you can tell what games someone didn’t like, or what was too extreme for their skill level or desired time investment. If you see games that have had their servers taken down, you can commiserate in your shared misery at never having gotten to finish its list.
To put it in a few words, there is value in lived experiences. When something is flawed, it adds to its character. Do you want a beautiful, cookie-cutter house in a suburban neighborhood, or would you rather have a lived-in home that harbors decades of your family’s history, from your sister’s graduation to your childhood pet’s final resting place?
If this resonates with you, don’t let it discourage you from hiding trophies at all. Rather, it’s a great argument for being mindful of your cuts. Remove trophies that trouble you, but don’t take out so much that you lose what makes your profile special.
Maintaining Perfection is Exhausting
Once you start hiding trophies, you might find it hard to stop. You already have an “H” mark on your profile, so what does it matter if you hide another title that didn’t amaze you? In fact, why not just get rid of everything that’s not at 100%?
This mindset leads to a slippery slope. Making hidden trophies the default is going to add so much more work to your gaming sessions. You may find yourself immediately gunning for those settings upon unlocking trophies in a game.
Obsessing over having a perfect profile to this degree is almost certainly unhealthy. It may even lead to you growing to despise trophy hunting as a whole. Don’t let your hobby turn into your job.
Conclusion
There’s a time and place for hiding trophies. Many trophy hunters swear by it, and others only do it as a last resort. Whichever type of trophy hunter you are, you can only benefit from knowing what steps are needed to hide trophies.
Have you ever hidden trophies on your PlayStation account? Do you view others negatively for having an “H” on their trophy hunting profiles? Let us know your thoughts on the topic in the comments below.
Looking for PlayStation games you’d never want to hide from your profile? Check out our discussion on the Rainbow Platinum Trophy Challenge, in which you must earn a platinum trophy for every color in a rainbow!
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