Sony communicated information about Accolades’ impending demise on a PlayStation support page entitled “Important notices regarding PlayStation products and services (opens in new tab).” Under a section called “Discontinued PlayStation apps, features and services,” the first entry is about “Accolades on PS5 consoles.” “In the fall of 2022, the Accolades feature on PlayStation 5 will no longer be supported,” it reads. “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.” In case you’ve never used the Accolades feature (don’t worry; no one else did, either), it’s a novel multiplayer system that lets you compliment helpful strangers. On its “How to give an accolade on PS5 consoles (opens in new tab)” page, Sony details the process. First, you play a multiplayer game with at least one player whom you don’t know. At the end of the match, you’ll see a “Give Accolade” screen. You can then compliment another player for being “Helpful,” “Welcoming,” “Good sport” or “Leader.” That player can monitor his or her Accolades and see how they grow over time. There were a few issues with the Accolade system, however. First and foremost, you can’t actually do anything with the Accolades, so there’s not much incentive to give, or collect, them. Second, Accolades are anonymous, and you can’t share them with anyone on your Friends list. As such, there’s no sense of satisfaction from sending one. Finally, few PS5 games actually support this system. Redditors (opens in new tab) found about a dozen titles that work with Accolades, which is not much when you consider the hundreds of multiplayer games available on the platform. Still, the Accolades system had the nut of a good idea. Public multiplayer lobbies can get pretty toxic, pretty quickly, and commending players for good behavior is one way to combat that. Perhaps with better rewards and more widespread support, Sony could implement a better Accolades-style system in the future. Until then, you’ll have to be on your best behavior in multiplayer matches, and hope that other players do the same.
