PlayStation Paying PS4 Players Up To $50,000 Bounty For Finding Bugs

Sony has just begun a new program to pay gamers to uncover hidden bugs and glitches in PlayStation titles. With the PlayStation 5 on the horizon, most players are looking to the future of video games, but that doesn’t mean companies shouldn’t have an eye towards improving their current software’s performance and security in the meantime.

Glitches and bugs are an unexpected yet inevitable part of the complex field of video game programming, where the slightest coding error can lead to a significant change in how certain assets operate in a game's world. The effect these have on gamers can vary, ranging from allowing Animal Crossing: New Horizons fans to duplicate their furniture for a fast bell to forcing an unlucky Red Dead Redemption 2 player to repurchase his entire inventory after his trusty horse is inexplicably trapped forever underwater. Some can even crash a game entirely or make a long-held save file completely unusable. For good or ill, glitches are always going to rear their ugly head in any popular video game, but now some players will be able to make a handsome amount of money for uncovering them.

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In a posting on PlayStation.Blog earlier today, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Senior Director Software Engineering Geoff Norton announced a new initiative dubbed the PlayStation Bug Bounty program, made in collaboration with web security group HackerOne. This program will offer cash rewards to players who uncover bugs and glitches, both in PS4 games and on the PlayStation Network. Pay rates will vary depending on the nature and severity of the issue in question, and the highest rewards are in the range of $50,000.

Sony’s PlayStation brand has had an exciting 2020 so far, with the upcoming PS5 system finally being revealed earlier this month in a highly successful Livestream event. Shown alongside the new hardware was a line-up of promising launch window titles, ranging from Insomniac’s dimension-hopping platformer Ratchet And Clank: Rift Apart to the heavily anticipated Horizon Forbidden West, which is the PS5’s most searched-about console exclusive.                 

With the gaming industry shifting gears toward a new console generation this holiday and video games becoming increasingly intricate in their programming, it's becoming more important than ever for companies to root out potentially game-breaking bugs and glitches. This makes PlayStation’s new Bug Bounty program an interesting prospect for players looking to make some significant change while helping to improve PlayStation’s software and online services. Now, when a player winds up losing months of progress when playing the latest game on PlayStation Network, that could be a path to financial earnings!

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Source: PlayStation.Blog, HackerOne

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