PlayStation Vita crack won't run pirated games

After the recent revelation that homebrew developer Yifan Lu is working on an exploit for the PlayStation Vita that will allow homebrew apps and games to run on the system, Lu has now revealed that his crack will not support piracy. In an interview with PlayStation Lifestyle, Lu said that he is 100 percent against piracy and that his crack for the PS Vita won’t allow things such as ISO Loaders, which are the main utility for playing pirated games.

The crack won't be able to run pirated games

“I am 100 percent against piracy and no tool I will make will benefit piracy. This tool, in fact, cannot be used for loading backups/pirated content even if I want to because of the physical limitations of the exploit (it is userland, no rights to decrypt/ load games),” Yifan Lu told PlayStation Lifestyle. When asked if his exploit will benefit other hackers who may want to enable piracy on the PlayStation Vita, Lu said, “When the exploit goes public, it could be used as a stepping stone to analyze the system for farther exploits, including the more desirable kernel exploit, which if found would open the system up entirely (mods, CFW, maybe even Linux/Android, and unfortunately ISO loaders). However, it takes a lot of skills to find such an exploit, and those who I talked to with the necessary skills are all anti-piracy. However, not thinking of potential other exploits, this one can only be used to load homebrews and nothing else.”

The main way Yifan Lu is bypassing the PS Vita’s tight code is through an unnamed exploit. There is no doubt that Sony will work on fixing the exploit as soon as possible, as the company is very much against letting its systems such as the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation Portable (PSP) get cracked. Players not only run homebrew apps and games with cracked software, but also pirated copies of games. The PSP is one of the most famous handheld systems purely because of homebrew software and piracy. Yifan claims that the exploit isn’t meant to be used for piracy, but what others do with the exploit is up to them.

Indie developer Wolfgang Wozniak has raised concerns over the exploit on Twitter in a conversation with Yifan. “Why would people want to buy games when they can just download my game from the next and load it up. It's not on a cart,” tweeted Wozniak. Yifan revealed in the conversation that the PS Vita would take months – at least half a year – to crack successfully.

Back in August, Kazuo Hirai, the CEO of Sony, revealed that the performance of the PlayStation Vita has been doing close to expectations of the company. The device has met scepticism among some analysts who doubt whether there is a place for such a device in a market which is increasingly dominated by games played on smartphones and tablets. "Worldwide, the Vita is pretty much along where we would expect it to be, maybe trending behind in certain territories," Hirai told Reuters on the sidelines of IFA, Europe's biggest consumer trade show, held in Berlin.