PS3 piracy - it begins. First hacked game shown running on unmodded PS3

After last week's cracking of the PS3's master key, it was only a matter of time before the first fullpirated game booted up on PS3. And... it has. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow has been shown running off a hard drive, with the PS3 convinced it's a PSN game. GeoHot, the hacker responsible for publishing the key online, may wellbe 'totally against piracy', but the pirates in question are gleefully touting 'GeoHot's custom firmware' as their springboard. D'oh.

Fortunately for Sony, at this stage it's still a complex thing to do to get it running, which is well beyond the capabilities of 'normal' gamers. But now the dam has been breached, it's unlikely anyone's going to stick their finger in the hole because they're having second thoughts.


Above: There it is -Castlevania installed to a retail PS3 hard drive like a PSN download game

Now. There is a very strongargument for us not posting stories about pirated games, as it can only exacerbate the problem, so I won't link to the site that reported this. But the comments field there is an amazingly interesting read, if only as a study into human behaviour.

There are also pages and pages of people failing to get it to work, like this...

...which has reached such a high level of assumed knowledge, I can't do anything but imagine it literally.


Above: My elf was so small the ink acted like a tattoo and now he refuses to load any PS3 games whatsoever

I know, the situation's not funny. Be sure to readour previousarticle on why this is all a Very Bad Thing righthere.

10 Jan, 2010

Fortunately for Sony, at this stage it's still a complex thing to do to get it running, which is well beyond the capabilities of 'normal' gamers. But now the dam has been breached, it's unlikely anyone's going to stick their finger in the hole because they're having second thoughts.


Above: There it is -Castlevania installed to a retail PS3 hard drive like a PSN download game

Now. There is a very strongargument for us not posting stories about pirated games, as it can only exacerbate the problem, so I won't link to the site that reported this. But the comments field there is an amazingly interesting read, if only as a study into human behaviour.

There are also pages and pages of people failing to get it to work, like this...

...which has reached such a high level of assumed knowledge, I can't do anything but imagine it literally.


Above: My elf was so small the ink acted like a tattoo and now he refuses to load any PS3 games whatsoever

I know, the situation's not funny. Be sure to readour previousarticle on why this is all a Very Bad Thing righthere.

10 Jan, 2010

Justin Towell

Justin was a GamesRadar staffer for 10 years but is now a freelancer, musician and videographer. He's big on retro, Sega and racing games (especially retro Sega racing games) and currently also writes for Play Magazine, Traxion.gg, PC Gamer and TopTenReviews, as well as running his own YouTube channel. Having learned to love all platforms equally after Sega left the hardware industry (sniff), his favourite games include Christmas NiGHTS into Dreams, Zelda BotW, Sea of Thieves, Sega Rally Championship and Treasure Island Dizzy.