Players can now redeem PlayStation Trophies for PSN credit

Remember those hundreds of hours you spent hunting down collectibles to claim an elusive Platinum Trophy? It turns out they weren’t such a waste of your time after all.

PS4 owners in the United States are now able to trade in their Trophies in return for (admittedly small) amounts of credit on the PSN accounts.

Trophies, for those not in the know, are Sony’s in-game reward system. They are unlocked by hitting certain milestones in games such as completing levels or beating bosses. They were originally introduced on PS3 after Microsoft enjoyed huge popularity with its Achievements system on Xbox 360. It’s a mechanism now employed by virtually all gaming formats across consoles, PC and smartphones.

As spotted by Kotaku, a new section on the PlayStation Rewards Passes page explains the details. Be warned, though – it’s going to take a big investment of time to gather together anything even coming close to a decent amount of credit.

For instance, 100 Silver Trophies can be handed over in exchange for 100 points. 25 Gold Trophies will win 250 points and 10 Platinum Trophies will earn 1,000 points. A $10 PSN voucher costs 1,000 points.

So a free $50 game will demand either 50 Platinum Trophies or some other such combination (such as five Platinums, 50 Golds and 500 Silvers). However, even some small change towards a future purchase will be welcomed by Trophy chasers.

It’s also not clear whether a traded-in Trophy can be re-earned and traded in again, although we would bet against it.

Kotaku did some maths and discovered that the top PSN Trophy holder Roughdaw4 could in theory grab themselves $1,583 in credit from their 15,551 Silver, 6,903 Gold, and 1,359 Platinum Trophies. This author, by contrast, could claim precisely nothing (720 Bronze, 82 Silver, 17 Gold and a big fat 0 Platinum).