Lack of online leaderboards on the genre

[SPM]

Is there any reason why so many shmups don't have online leaderboards? Not only ports, but new releases as well.

Is it for financial reasons (servers costs) or difficulty to control hackers on the boards? Is it hard to implement? Devs don't care/value this? I don't get it

[ATTRACTS]

$

[leodash]

Steam has leaderboards API. It even has optional storage for associated data for replays. And yes, too many hackers on online leaderboard. Example is in Ikaruga, the scores are insanely high, but when you look at the replays they died at the first wave.

[endali]

because a lot of shmup developers don't understand that the internet exists. some of them still want pc players to buy a game on a physical disk. if these people can't even figure out how to put a game on steam, there's zero chance of them putting together a global online leaderboard lol

[OmegaFlareX]

Steam has leaderboards API. It even has optional storage for associated data for replays. And yes, too many hackers on online leaderboard. Example is in Ikaruga, the scores are insanely high, but when you look at the replays they died at the first wave.

Maybe the replays are just desyncing. That's a common issue with the CAVE games on steam, too.

[Elixir]

When I was helping someone getting doujin games on Steam, I was able to report any obviously cheated scores to them and they'd get them removed pretty easily. It took maybe a day or less, because pushing Steam updates for games is fast like that.

Most publishers simply won't bother though, it's just extra unpaid legwork.

Expense of online bandwidth depends on the platform usually.

Maybe the replays are just desyncing. That's a common issue with the CAVE games on steam, too.

I'm not really sure 50+ replays desynced, seems unreasonable. For the record, getting anything over 40m is borderline impossible. Same with Mushi Original, nobody is going to have over 70m+ but there's scores uploaded way above that margin.