You can’t pirate Medal of Honor, we said, because the game doesn’t run on firmware 3.41 – it needs the decrypting goodness that only 3.42 can provide. Right? Wrong. It seems that unscrupulous hackers have managed to find a work around – there’s lots of hoops, jumps and very illegal goings-on, but it’s been done: jailbroken PS3s running 3.41 can now play EA’s latest first person shooter.
We won’t go into the technical aspects of the loophole, or link to the site detailing how it’s done, suffice to say that – for some reason – once a game has an update available the PS3 doesn’t appear to check what the original executable is, so it’s possible (apparently) to swap out the 3.42 dependant Medal of Honor executable for one that will run quite happily on 3.41 – it doesn’t matter which.
This is a crushing shame – we’d have hoped the recent firmware updates had blocked this sort of thing happening – let’s hope 3.50 added more security to the innards of the console and that no more games suffer the same fate going forward.
tonycawley
This is very very sad news indeed. I’m quite sure Sony will get a way to block this though, they have some excellent coders there, they’ve done such a good job of keeping the PS3 hack free in the past I’m very confident they’ll get this sorted very quickly.
tonycawley
Also, thinking about it, you’ll only be able to play the SP campaign anyway, as to play online you’d have to have the latest update data, so this is pretty useless. Most people who want to play MOH want it to play online.
Peco
Good point. You’d imagine the kind of people who would bother to jailbreak PS3s are avid gamers, and surely these people aren’t merely interested in playing the offline SP campaigns.
Serebii.Net
I’d want my Ps3 jailbroken, but only for homebrew apps..
So yeah, I don’t see it being worth it =P
hazelam
well i wouldn’t be that interested in the online mode.
wouldn’t pirate it though, i’d probably just rent it, or wait until it’s really cheap preowned, usually takes a long time with a popular title.
bigdon23
They will probably use there own homebrew server of some kind
Porcupine_I
could this kind of problem be connected with the delay of Gran Turismo 5 ?
i think so!
solidsteven
*overdramatic music*
tonycawley
It does indeed appear that it is. What dramatic music can we play? Ok, quick Google search, the dramatic music to be used is Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man.
jayjay119
I think this is dramtic enough.
http://www.dramabutton.com/
cc_star
The problem is, that once a game is ‘backed up’ (whether it’s your own copy or not) it’s file system is open to be edited. If it’s file system can be edited, then any workaround can be introduced.
Locking a game to a firmware will ALWAYS be crackable
3shirts
This is exactly what happened with the PSP. You’d have thought they would have learned from that
3shirts
This probably indicates the reason for the GT5 delay. I guess just sticking 3.5 on disk and checking for it on loading is not enough, perhaps they are working on a way to make the game simply not work unless you are using 3.5 by editing the code in the game itself. Still hackable but way more work that would put off, or at least delay pirates.
ruinereraser
IMHO Sony will lose more because of the GT5 release date delay than the hack attempts. Once it’s backed up the code can be altered anyway, so what’s the point? As usual legitimate users lost the most in this battle.
Radboud
“As usual legitimate users lost the most in this battle.”
And that will never change if people keep pirating games. The fault herein is not with Sony for trying to protect their interest, but lies with the pirates who don’t care about anything but their “free games”.
3shirts
I disagree. Sony will lose almost nothing for the delay. Annoyed as people are, it’s really just cutting your nose off to spite your face if you don’t buy it because of that, so the vast majority will still hand over their cash just the same
H3O
I can’t imagine that anyone is surprised.
Dar-Kaus
IMO if Sony haven’t already got some, they should consider hiring some of these hackers the way the CIA/FBI does. Keep your friends close and your enemys even closer.
Bilbo_bobbins
thats a shame really.
Blayney
Could be worse, I hear Blackops on 360 is already on torrent sites!