Why You Can’t Pirate Medal Of Honor

Piracy sucks, and thankfully, despite the unfortunate leak of the USB jigkey that started all the recent PS3 piracy off, Sony have been pretty quick to get it locked down and shut off.  The most recent firmware updates have been focused on making sure that the security hole was patched up good and proper, and EA’s decision to ensure that Medal of Honor was one of the first games to be built with the latest SDK (software development kit) has meant that the first person shooter (released today, reviewed here) is safe from the pirates.

Why?  Because since SDK 3.42 (these things normally tie in with the appropriate firmware update too) PS3 games have been encoded with another layer of encryption that the console decrypts on the fly, but only if it’s running firmware 3.42.

Basically, you need firmare 3.42 to decrypt the games, and as we all know the USB keys (such as the PSGroove) don’t work under 3.42, so the process is stopped dead in its tracks.  Firmware 3.41 (and under) can’t decrypt the games, kicking out an error 80010019 instead of running the pirated copy.  Of course, this is likely to turn into a cat and mouse game now between Sony and the pirates, who are now planning to try to decrypt the games’ main executable and re-distribute, but hopefully this won’t be possible for them.

So, whilst ensuring Gran Turismo 5 was built using the latest SDK has more than likely resulted in the delay, at least it means anyone playing the game is meant to be playing it.  Let’s hope all future PS3 games are built in a similarly secure manner.