PSP piracy threat looms

By Games Industry.biz Published 4 July, 2005

Full games run off memory stick.

Hackers have succeeded in making the PlayStation Portable play pirated copies of four commercial games from the Memory Stick slot, in a worrying development that could eventually lead to widespread piracy on the platform.

Amateur programming teams working on the PSP had already succeeded in making the machine run unauthorised code, and a large number of "homebrew" games and emulators for older systems are being circulated on the Internet.

In recent days hackers have managed to go even further, by making the PSP boot pirate copies of games - and now four titles, namely Archer Maclean's Mercury, Lumines, Coded Arms and Puzzle Bobble - can be downloaded from pirate sites and loaded direct from a high capacity Memory Stick.

The exploit, which uses a bug in certain versions of the software that ships with the PSP to circumvent the machine's protection system, has already been addressed by Sony in more recent versions of the system software, and will almost certainly not work on European models when they arrive in September.

Indeed, SCE UK's PR chief David Wilson dismissed the suggestion that the exploit is "seriously bad news", saying that it is "more another string to the bow for arguing against grey imports."

Original Japanese consoles, which shipped with the 1.0 firmware, and later Japanese and early American consoles, which shipped with version 1.5, are susceptible to the exploit, which requires no modification to the hardware and is easy enough for even users who aren't particularly technically competent to use.

However, anyone who has upgraded their firmware over the Internet won't be able to use it - and Sony is planning to ship automatic firmware upgrades on future game titles, which should also lock out the exploit on many consoles.

The fear now, however, is that rather than simply locking down the PSP with the upgrades, this scenario could turn into a war of attrition similar to Microsoft's attempts to lock down on Xbox mod chip users with updates to the Dashboard software - efforts which have largely proved futile.

It's not just game piracy that is a concern on the PSP, however. Freely available software has also been created which can rip DVDs into formats that can be played back from Memory Stick, raising the prospect of widespread movie piracy on the device as well.

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Comments (52) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Wobbler #1 7 years ago

    It would be interesting to see if loading times and battery life improved when playing games off of Memory Stick: No UMD disc to spin up and seek over, you see?

  • krudster #2 7 years ago

    I'm sure loading off solid state is both quicker and more battery efficent. Not really cricket though.

  • gamingdave #3 7 years ago

    Indeed, SCE UK's PR chief David Wilson dismissed the suggestion that the exploit is "seriously bad news", saying that it is "more another string to the bow for arguing against grey imports."

    Errr, who the f**K does he figure that one out. They made a machine with security holes and sold it to the public. Holes were found and exploited. How does that tie in with importers, unless hes suggestiung that they have recalled all pre1.5 machines in the US and Japan. Or hes suggesting that importing Europeans are more likely to pirate games than Americans or Japs.

  • Tonka #4 7 years ago

    I think this is good news for sony when it comes to hardware sales. Free access to games = more PSP's sold.

  • justMe #5 7 years ago

    But bad news when it comes to software sales, and that's where profits come from...

  • Royal Fool #6 7 years ago

    Heh, exactly. Hardware is never sold with profit in mind, only the software... which is exactly the reason that Sony is so scared.

    Also very polite of David Wilson to assume that every single customer of theirs in Europe is a pirate. Nice job, you certainly know how to do your PR moves.

  • #7 7 years ago

    I am beginning to wonder if maybe games will come out with different firmware upgrades across the different markets.

    they do seem absurdly paranoid about import machines

  • tonynibbles #8 7 years ago

    I wish Sony would get their act together and sort out some MS game downloads. Give us a UMB browser with MS downloads via WiFi...

    And I want to be able to walk in to HMV and download music / video and games directly to my PSP and pay for them there and then.

  • texx #9 7 years ago

    now There is a reason to buy a psp

  • texx #10 7 years ago

    tony are you blind. you don't have to pay

  • The12thMonkey #11 7 years ago

    I don't know why he's getting so pissed off with Imports, since I would suspect that the amount of import machines allows them to diddle the software attachment figures for the EU launch. If people who have an import PSP decide to buy a game or two from the EU lineup, the number of games per unit will be distorted. In essence, it let's them put a positive spin on the launch figures if they are not as exciting as they hoped for.
    Edited by 1 at 04/07/05 @ 17:50

  • killyourtv #12 7 years ago

    show some respect to developers

  • JHuxley #13 7 years ago

    The PSP could be the Xbox of the handheld world - such a potentially great homebrew console. Let's just hope Sony give up and turn a blind eye to such practices...as unlikely as that will be.

  • smelly #14 7 years ago

    "show some respect to developers "


    .. erm.. and lets not forget to the console manufacturer your fanboys of!

    Always makes me laugh.. it seems the pirates tend to be the biggest fanboys and will defend their system against ANY negative comments, and go on about sales figures, etc etc.. Without actually realising that if they're not buying the games, they're killing the system!

    profits come from games sales, not machine sales.. Without games sales, who's "winning" the console war is pointless..

    although this simple concept seems to be hard for fanboys (especially fanboy pirates) to grasp...

  • onyxbox #15 7 years ago

    I upgraded my PSP just before they hacked 1.50 and I was pretty peeved off... I'm not too interested in the PSP games (they're pretty avarage so far) but I would have liked to have run a few snes / genesis / MAME etc. off memory stick... at least then I would have got some money's worth out of the thing.

    Ahh well... keep waiting, perhaps sony will get that official Homebrew dev kit out the door sooner now.

  • abeit #16 7 years ago

    I am definetely buying one now.

  • JayG #17 7 years ago

    I'm just waiting for ScummVM for PSP and I'm a happy bunny. As for PSP piracy, memory sticks are very expensive, so for a GTA you would need a 2 gig, which costs a fair few quid.

  • Burton2000 #18 7 years ago

    im sure nintendo were making profit on gamecube from launch

  • Pirotic #19 7 years ago

    nintendo made a loss of $10 a unit at launch on the GC, not sure how thats changed tho.

  • deepmenace #20 7 years ago

    Heh - cause we all thought the PSP was gonna be the first machine to flummox the haxx0rz didnt we?

    Chinny reckon.

    The minute the sony techs said " lets put a memory stick in it " it was a done deal.

  • Xerx3s #21 7 years ago

    meh.

  • bionutz #22 7 years ago

    Still not convinced to buy it sorry. I will not encourage pirating, but any game that costs more than 30 euros and it's not online is overpriced.

  • masterson #23 7 years ago

    ..."any game that costs more than 30 euros and it's not online is overpriced."

    Oh dear....
    Develpers must love you, saves all that fiddly AI coding / immersive story bollocks...

  • brutal #24 7 years ago

    it was only a matter of time.

    That you can run a pirate game using only official hardware without modification is scandalous, especially before the damn thing is even released over here! Sony have a responsibility to protect the copyright of those doing business on the machine - especially given the cut they take with each software sale.

    Even the xbox (basically a PC) took quite a while before people figued out how to break it down.

    It will be very interesting to see how the dev community reacts to this. Will they shy away now that piracy can become freely rampant, or will they embrace things like on demand downloadable levels, steam style authentication and the such?

  • m2h #25 7 years ago

    I'll buy one when a hack comes out so you can install a Toshiba 1.8" HDD or similar tiny IDE/TypeII storage medium. And a bios switch to avoid Sony's futile attempts.

    Anyways.. shouldn't be long till there is away to reflash the firmware back to an older one. ;p
    Edited by 1 at 04/07/05 @ 21:25

  • captain-future #26 7 years ago

    I don't like it when people use pirated products but I have two observations:

    1. why did Sony spend money on copy protection in the first place? every ordinary customer has to pay that price.

    2. homebrewn is good IMHO, why hamper it - think of it as an opporutinity (I know Sony is not good at giving users freedom and space)

    they wanted the PSP to be more than a gaming machine, now users take over control... and of course that's not OK with Sony *tztzttztz*

  • el_pollo_diablo #27 7 years ago

    Piracy is Piracy is Piracy, BUT

    To be fair, Sony knew full well what they were letting themselves in for when they added memory card support to the PSP. If the machine read UMDs only, then I suspect the problem would be far less widespread.

    I wonder, incidentally, how much Nintendo has lost due to Cartridge based flashcards like the EZ-Advance and the like. Not a great deal in the wider view of things I'll bet.

    Anyone got any ideas?
    Edited by 1 at 04/07/05 @ 21:59

  • dokodemo #28 7 years ago

    I didn't realise Coded Arms had been hacked. But now Eurogamer have told me, I just went to find it on torrentspy, and now, erm...

    Probably shouldn't have announced it to the whole world.

  • tiddles #29 7 years ago

    Well, is Coded Arms any good then? ;)

    The point about needing a 2GB memory card seems to be overlooked by many people... unless the hackers can cut out movies etc (or indeed games aren't using the full whack), you'll only be able to have one game per card, or you'll have to buy a new card for each game (of which a few would certainly be made by Sony). Even you only ever kept two or three games at once, that's a fair number of extra (pricey) memory cards out there...

  • jienn #30 7 years ago

    There is nothing wrong with taking a console that you've bought and making it better. Sony, what's so wrong with playing with emulators on the PSP? This is the reason people still buy xboxes... so they can modify it to do what they wan't it to do. It is the same reason I would buy a PSP.

  • oerhoert #31 7 years ago

    Well, as for people loading DVDs over to the memory stick, that's the way it should always have been from the start. The whole UMD concept is just a way for Sony to sell the same products twice (DVD and UMD). Why should an honest, paying consumer have to pay twice for the same content on different formats? Because that's the rules of the corporate world, that's why.

    As for getting uncertified code to run on the machine in general, I realise it's a bit of a problem for them, but that's life, people. It's pretty much impossible to control a technology completely when it's exposed to millions of people. Some of them may have more than just a bit of techie insight.

  • dokodemo #32 7 years ago

    You don't need a 2Gb memorystick... Most PSP game isos I've seen would fit on a 512Mb stick.

  • Roamer #33 7 years ago

    Nintendo should sue Microsoft and Sony. After all, the Xbox was basically built for emulation software - and most people I know who own an Xbox use it to emulate various Nintendo software. This hurts the backwards-compatabiliy feature of the Revolution, and more relevant in this instance - the PSP could easily emulate the GBA.

  • spillz #34 7 years ago

    all this underground action is just a rational response to artificial price setting where console prices are set below cost and game prices are set above. i'm no pirate but i don't have any sympathy for the console manufacturers. overall, the effect of piracy is a drop in the ocean since most people who pirate wouldn't have bought at any price.

  • trevd72 #35 7 years ago

    a hack group is to release details of a loader that will load any game from the stick as an iso that has been release to this date. making it easier to pirate games.

    i took one of my legally owned dvd's lastnight and converted it to mpg4 and put it on my psp what is wrong with that. i have a pretty big (some would say sad) collection of consoles from pong to the current gen. why should i not be able to play tetris gaiden battle, solar jet man or chrono trigger from my psp when i own the original games too.

  • Shadar #36 7 years ago

    It's interesting to note that the corporations themselves never take any kind of blame for the security breaches. I don't really know anyone who has a vanilla Xbox anymore ... the Xbox has gotten its name and reputation based on its potential as a movie, emu and free game box. That must've cost Xbox developers quite a bit.

    The PSP has the same kind of potential. Locked UMD standard coupled with a card reader? I suppose the idea never struck them that perhaps someone would try to run software off a memory card ..?

    Should really we, the consumers; and in this case the already rather indignant European customers, need to pay the price, as well as being accused, of their poor console design? Also: I'd love to see the board room meeting in which they discuss the software price point.

    "What? Rampant piracy, you say? Hm. Let's just up the price on software. That'll squeeze 'em out!"

    Meh. Humongous amounts of it.

  • trevd72 #37 7 years ago

    piracy is always a good excuse for high prices. necer the other wasy round look at the gamecube almost no piracy but that is not reflected in the price - is it. piracy sells consoles and each of these console will have at least 2 games bough for it - purchases that may have not been made.

  • Frogger #38 7 years ago

    jienn :"Sony, what's so wrong with playing with emulators on the PSP? This is the reason people still buy xboxes... so they can modify it to do what they wan't it to do. It is the same reason I would buy a PSP."

    The wrong thing is :
    - When you buy a PSP, Sony looses money
    - They expect you to buy 10 games in the machine's life cycle (next 5 years, maybe more) and earn back the money they've lost when they sold you the machine
    - If you play emulated games on the machine, or DivX pirated movies, or pirated MP3s, they earn nothing.
    - Even worse, when playing all the above, you don't feel the need anymore to buy commercial and legal PSP games.

    This is a nightmare for Sony.

  • trevd72 #39 7 years ago

    so what about the casuals who dont buy many games and when they do it is second hand.....sony lose here too.

  • reflux #40 7 years ago

    Atleast they make money from every sold Memorystick (and yes, even 3rd party ones since they own the patents).
    Edited by 1 at 05/07/05 @ 09:26

  • tonynibbles #41 7 years ago


    tony are you blind. you don't have to pay


    Dont have to pay? You have to normally pay for things in HMV. I love music and pay for all my CDs, occasionally pay for tracks off iTunes and well, Sony do something called 'connect' that no one uses :p

    Its the way forward: In store downloads. I've been using an MP3 walkman for the past 5 years now, starting with that NW-MS1, The little blue network memory stick walkman Sony first did. £300 smackers for that and god knows how much for a 64Mb card. Now Im with PSP and a 1Gb card and things havnt changed much on the retail side of things: still no in store downloads. The number of times I've walked in to a store and thought 'I wish I could download that track on to my walkman'. Pfft.
    Edited by 1 at 05/07/05 @ 09:41

  • smelly #42 7 years ago

    "piracy sells consoles and each of these console will have at least 2 games bough for "

    Well i probably agree with the first remark.. the reality is that most machines need around 5 or 6 "first hand" (i.e. not second hand) games to be sold per machine to make a profit.

    If all people own a machine for is to play illegally downloaded games on emulators or pirated games designed for that machine.. Then they're not really fair to the machines they're probably fangirls of.

  • Danj #43 7 years ago

    Heh, I upgraded my PSP to 1.51 right after I got it, assuming (mistakenly as it turned out) that if 1.50 got hacked then 1.51 would not be far behind (and at the time there weren't any 1.50 hacks on the horizon, this was in early May). I do wish this ISO loader business hadn't happened though; now Sony has a good excuse to go after homebrew developers. If it had stayed with things like emulators and homebrew utilities and games I don't think they'd have bothered.

  • El_MUERkO #44 7 years ago

    Bet you anything sales of Memory Stick Duo's will go up and Sony will rake in the cash from licencing :)

  • Danj #45 7 years ago

    "Bet you anything sales of Memory Stick Duo's will go up and Sony will rake in the cash from licencing :)"

    Sales of Memory Stick Duos already have gone up; SanDisk basically ran out of 1Gb sticks entirely, though they seem to have gotten on top of that problem now, and Sony themselves are just beginning to have shortages. Since Memory Sticks are more expensive than pretty much any other type of flash memory, they must be absolutely raking it in.

  • teabagger #46 7 years ago

    "If it had stayed with things like emulators and homebrew utilities and games I don't think they'd have bothered."

    Yeah I think that's a fair point mate, everyone knows this sort of thing shifts hardware... even the bigwigs must know this. But of course it's impossible to crack down on the one thing without hitting this too :(

    Interesting how this is apparently an argument against grey imports though, quite how David Wilson came to this conclusion is beyond any kind of logic.

  • Danj #47 7 years ago

    "quite how David Wilson came to this conclusion is beyond any kind of logic."

    I think most people will agree that Sony Europe's so-called case against imports is based not on logic but on money - they're pissed that they're losing out on PSP sales because of their botched launch schedule.

  • FredMT #48 7 years ago

    The problem is their making: Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. These guys deliberately chopped up the world into zones and then proceeded to sell their wares based on that markation; charging rediculous high prices for endless duplication. We willingly pay for this stupid scheme while all the while complaining. Sony, in particular, is double guilty because they are in the position of "one hand endlessly watching the other." The media side is watching the hardware side. This is a tug-a-war in which all of their energy will be dissipated on itself. Their business plan is wacked and becoming more so as time go on. Surely, MS will beat them within three console moves.

    Before releasing this PSP, Sony should have made available a recordable UMD disc. They have the technology to make the capacity the same size as a regular DVD and if that means wetting the publics' taste with their Blue Ray format, then so be it. It would have easy to build the recording hardware: the size of the floppy drive should be okay: PCs have that available slot and if they want to, then power the thing with USB from the motherboard.

    Only after having the disc and burner in place should they have released the PSP. Most people, given this option would gladly buy and use 'legal' means to view media on this product. I say most people because their will always be priates but given the ability to "copy an already owned" movie, the majority will comply.

    Why should I buy the same movie, or music CD, twice? I will probably watch the regular DVD at home more often than the UMD, which by the way, is for mobile occasions.

    Enough of this regional encoding nonsence. We should tell these media giants to take their wares and stuff it until we, the customer, have the freedom to buy from whom we may.

    I would like to buy one of these PSPs but I cannot bring myself to support Sony in this matter: and probably not with their PS3. I won' do MS either!

    Maybe the PS2 is my last gadget...

  • haru #49 7 years ago

    /just bought a 1Go MStickPro

  • AOFanboi #50 7 years ago

    I'm just waiting for the first auto-installed firmware upgrade that breaks older games. Congrats on your new game, a pity your existing collection no longer works.

  • wendyw867 #51 6 years ago

    anyone know how to save snes games on psp memory card, once turned off and back on again all data is lost, there must be a way around this

  • tengu #52 6 years ago

    Depends on what emulator you're using. I used the Snes9x one, and I just saved games in the games as usual, and they were there as normal every time I reloaded, though you can also use the 'save state' function from the emulator menu(Left on the analog stick with Snes9x for example) which allows you to save anywhere at any time.