Vast majority don't care and simply want to play video games on their TV with PlayStation. This is only going to cause supply shortage and increased scalping. Annoyance to people who simply want to buy a console and play games. Get a PC and do whatever you want on it. The game ownership bullcrap from Sony (removal of disc bay) is a different problem. People don't realise the console hardware is subsidised and the firmware locks are the way to recoup the costs from Sony walled garden of games. If it becomes a general purpose hardware(more wide spread jailbreaks) Sony will eventually decide to simply sell the hardware at component cost parity and ruin it for everyone. Jailbreakers can't keep it to themselves.
What Apple software has not / cannot be reverse engineered?
Runtime modification and replacement is limited by hardware root of trust, but for sheer source inspection I don’t think they’re special. What products are you thinking about?
Is there still a market for physical media? I assume they're transitioning to download-only because it costs more and most customers prefer downloads anyway.
Article is wrong about one point, Wolverine is perfectly playable on 13.60 jailbreak. Currently, there are no unsupported titles with jailbreak.
The upcoming GTA VI announced that it will require the latest software to be playable.
Usually you could overcome simple version checks with a little reverse engineering / live debugging. However, I'm certain with Sony being on notice, they'll probably introduce a bunch of breaking APIs in the coming versions (existing APIs will start behaving differently, might introduce more server checks - worse still, some game/PS5 logic lives on the server). More work for game developers.
As a long-time RE this does not surprise me. It feels like an eternity ago that the MCPs for various reverse engineering tools dropped, but from the onset it seemed like a perfect fit. While we've had ML-assisted solutions before, nothing of this scale comes close, and as the recent Linux kernel presentation mentioned, a lot of it boils down to a massive effort-by-exhaustion and pattern-matching. This is the golden road for RE - if you know your compiler versions, processor arch, and you have something trained on countless permutations of different complexities, you're going to hit the right notes.
Yesterday's news on the mathematics breakthroughs were a foregone conclusion - there is a lot of hidden overlap between it and RE. RE is just the more obscure of the two, but among my circle of peers, many people have already undertaken (and succeeded) at very ambitious projects. Obvious standouts are things like Modern Warfare which gets mentioned because it is highly popular, but many games have already been reversed by the quiet majority.
I don't see many options for PS/Nintendo. Some form of bespoke-hardware-based lockdown reminiscent of the Cell processor, perhaps. But that is a lot of R&D to spend on something like this. Will have to wait and see.
So, what to make of this? Machines of the future or stochastic parrots? Of course. I'll take two.
I miss the old days of the PS1 where you got a chip fitted into the machine and then used a spring so it would still boot up when the lid was open.
And you could cheat with games by plugging Action Replay or Gameshark into the serial port which basically just fucked with the game's memory. I don't even know what the serial port was actually meant for.
You short pins on the right joycon connection at boot time to enter recovery control mode in the boot firmware which (via an unpatchable exploit) gives you full access to the hardware IIRC.
(I presume the picofly & similar devices are just doing this automatically so you can boot the hardware under user control without requiring other hardware to make the exploit work?)
Unpatched v1 models can be softmodded no hardware modding (picofly) needed. For those you only need to enter the recovery mode which can be done with a paperclip > sorting the pins on the right joycon rail. Though it's also not recommended because you can fry the whole Switch with the paperclip. Nowadays people use 3D printed cheap RCM jigs.
This is not like the PS3 generation where the Cell processors had massive untapped potential, and were priced well below market for that kind of compute.
The PS5 (and its Xbox counterpart) is more-or-less just a modern budget gaming PC with a little bit of special sauce. The only advantage here is that component pricing may have been locked in before the RAM crisis.
CPU is a rather weak Zen2. If that still appeals to you, instead purchase a BC-250 mining board. It's a PS5 reject and nearly all of them can be fully unlocked for all 40CUs and 8 CPU cores. They are quite popular right now for building Steam Machines and all the hacking has been done with replacement BIOS mods.
Not worth it. It's basically a knee capped Ryzen 3700X with less cache. You can get a better CPU for less money. The GPU performance is still alright but it's not good at non-gaming tasks as it lacks cores for ML tasks.
Beware that you need a hypervisor exploit to run Linux. And these are incredibly rare. But, there was one patched very recently on firmware version 14.10
It is indeed a good time. Latest firmware patched the recent exploit, but most or all boxed PS5s in stores should still be on old enough firmware. This will not be true forever. Beware of used units since they could've been updated already.
Wouldn't make much sense since hardware-wise you're very much paying for the GPU power and not CPU power, which isn't gonna help you much at compiling.
This quote has been taken too far out of context from the original talk, which is worth viewing.
He was saying that piracy can be reduced by making the product easily available. When it was easier to download a pirated version from home than to drive to the store and back and unwrap a physical CD, piracy was easier.
That is not true today. The easiest path is to buy the game digitally through the service on the device and play it directly. Pirating it is more work and harder to do.
So quoting Gabe Newell in support is wrong. Saying it’s a service problem is also wrong when the piracy route takes a lot more work. The goalposts keep moving around (and I’m sure they’ll move more in the replies) but we have to eventually admit that a lot of pirates are pirating because they don’t want to pay for the game. It’s the most obvious fact on this topic but the comments are always full of mental gymnastics pretending the pirates are noble people doing the right thing.
> He was saying that piracy can be reduced by making the product easily available. When it was easier to download a pirated version from home than to drive to the store and back and unwrap a physical CD, piracy was easier.
Could've sworn the original context was that he was referring to Russian piracy, where many of the games are not available there legally at the time, leaving piracy as the only recourse.
I will give you an example. Try to find the DLC's for the original Skyrim on Steam. Technically they exist, but Bethesda has requested Steam to delist them from the search and navigation. And they are not subject to the yearly discounts etc the base game is.
I think you're missing 2 factors in the service/distribution problem:
- pricing - for some kids some games are just too expensive, and they still want to play, and don't want to be left out;
- platform lock - this is more for emulation, where people don't want to buy a platform to play 1 or 2 IP;
I see Gabe's reference in both of those scenarios, because Steam always had good deals, while retailers didn't.
You might say: "in that case, some people are only willing to pay 0$ for a game, and they shouldn't have access to it."
While I understand it, I bet you a massive chunk of GTA V, RDR2, and soon GTA VI players that have available income now, had their first experiences with the series through piracy.
But I agree there's no nobility, just people that can't afford stuff, or don't value it enough to part with their money, but you can't assume they would be customers at the moment they get a copy.
Piracy is more “I don’t like the terms you’ve set.” Some terms are overbearing. Some are more reasonable. Both get pirated but at different rates. Some people just don’t like the idea of paying at all. Some people will pay onerous terms.
Gabes point is thay the balance of the two is overwhelmingly; yes some pirates will always pirate. Most win prefer to buy the game if the terms are reasonable. Being smart enough to undetstand this and run his business accordingly is why Gabe owns yachts.
So how is it now? Do they still play games or has it reduced? (Genuinely don't know the year on year market).
edit: I looked up some figures and the numbers had a brief dip in 2022 but are continually increasing since. So I would say, games are being played and rising still.
Of course and perfect example of that is the existential crisis of Hollywood. Video games aggressively outpace traditional cinema in revenue, cultural relevance, and audience time and Hollywood can't really do anything with that.
GTA V hit $1B in 3 days. GTA VI will be even bigger than that, probably the biggest entertainmant product launch ever.
Not all software, obviously. Apple is notoriously good at producing "black box" products.
Runtime modification and replacement is limited by hardware root of trust, but for sheer source inspection I don’t think they’re special. What products are you thinking about?
On PS5 it's done in couple of seconds.
Yesterday's news on the mathematics breakthroughs were a foregone conclusion - there is a lot of hidden overlap between it and RE. RE is just the more obscure of the two, but among my circle of peers, many people have already undertaken (and succeeded) at very ambitious projects. Obvious standouts are things like Modern Warfare which gets mentioned because it is highly popular, but many games have already been reversed by the quiet majority.
I don't see many options for PS/Nintendo. Some form of bespoke-hardware-based lockdown reminiscent of the Cell processor, perhaps. But that is a lot of R&D to spend on something like this. Will have to wait and see.
So, what to make of this? Machines of the future or stochastic parrots? Of course. I'll take two.
And you could cheat with games by plugging Action Replay or Gameshark into the serial port which basically just fucked with the game's memory. I don't even know what the serial port was actually meant for.
The rarely-used Playstation Link cable, ostensibly:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Link_Cable
Never used it myself, but it allowed a really weird first-person multiplayer mode in Bushido Blade:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-obFMn_u3U4
(I presume the picofly & similar devices are just doing this automatically so you can boot the hardware under user control without requiring other hardware to make the exploit work?)
The PS5 (and its Xbox counterpart) is more-or-less just a modern budget gaming PC with a little bit of special sauce. The only advantage here is that component pricing may have been locked in before the RAM crisis.
So, if you buy a PS5 now, you should be good
"Piracy is a service problem" - Gabe Newell
This quote has been taken too far out of context from the original talk, which is worth viewing.
He was saying that piracy can be reduced by making the product easily available. When it was easier to download a pirated version from home than to drive to the store and back and unwrap a physical CD, piracy was easier.
That is not true today. The easiest path is to buy the game digitally through the service on the device and play it directly. Pirating it is more work and harder to do.
So quoting Gabe Newell in support is wrong. Saying it’s a service problem is also wrong when the piracy route takes a lot more work. The goalposts keep moving around (and I’m sure they’ll move more in the replies) but we have to eventually admit that a lot of pirates are pirating because they don’t want to pay for the game. It’s the most obvious fact on this topic but the comments are always full of mental gymnastics pretending the pirates are noble people doing the right thing.
Could've sworn the original context was that he was referring to Russian piracy, where many of the games are not available there legally at the time, leaving piracy as the only recourse.
- pricing - for some kids some games are just too expensive, and they still want to play, and don't want to be left out;
- platform lock - this is more for emulation, where people don't want to buy a platform to play 1 or 2 IP;
I see Gabe's reference in both of those scenarios, because Steam always had good deals, while retailers didn't.
You might say: "in that case, some people are only willing to pay 0$ for a game, and they shouldn't have access to it."
While I understand it, I bet you a massive chunk of GTA V, RDR2, and soon GTA VI players that have available income now, had their first experiences with the series through piracy.
But I agree there's no nobility, just people that can't afford stuff, or don't value it enough to part with their money, but you can't assume they would be customers at the moment they get a copy.
Gabes point is thay the balance of the two is overwhelmingly; yes some pirates will always pirate. Most win prefer to buy the game if the terms are reasonable. Being smart enough to undetstand this and run his business accordingly is why Gabe owns yachts.
edit: I looked up some figures and the numbers had a brief dip in 2022 but are continually increasing since. So I would say, games are being played and rising still.
Of course and perfect example of that is the existential crisis of Hollywood. Video games aggressively outpace traditional cinema in revenue, cultural relevance, and audience time and Hollywood can't really do anything with that.
GTA V hit $1B in 3 days. GTA VI will be even bigger than that, probably the biggest entertainmant product launch ever.