Sony offering PSP developers code to 'slow down' piracy

by Andrew Yoon on May 21st 2010 6:30PM

Sony's senior vice president of publisher relations, Rob Dyer, has always been vocal about the "biggest problem" that plagues the PSP: Piracy. However, a new endeavor by the platform holder may offer renewed hope in the continued battle against illegal downloads. Dyer told Gamasutra that Sony has been helping developers implement some kind of protective code, potentially offering "a 60-day shelf life" before a game inevitably "gets hacked."

Dyer did not provide details on how this added code functions, and whether or not it functions similarly to the PlayStation Network connectivity first tested in SOCOM Fireteam Bravo 3. Like EA Sports' Online Game Pass, all online functionality of Bravo 3 is locked out for gamers that don't buy a legitimate copy of the game at retail or online. The upcoming PSP version of ModNation Racers also features the same restrictions.

"It's become a very difficult proposition to be profitable," Dyer admitted. With PSP on the cusp of a series of major releases -- including God of War: Ghost of Sparta, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep -- publishers and developers will undoubtedly want to pay close attention to Sony's continued battle against non-seafaring pirates.

Source

Tags: piracy, psp, rob-dyer, scea, sony, Sony-Computer-Entertainment-America

Reader Comments (55)

Wheres the baby pirates?!?!?

I want to know this too!
Where are they? WHERE!?

I don't get it, the PSP doesn't have any emulators working in a meaningful fashion at the moment. That's when they can start bitching about piracy, the majority of people don't homebrew their PSPs because most people realize that if they screw it up, that's $160 down the drain

I think Sony is up-playing the piracy rates to explain low software sales, when in reality the software sales are just plain low for no other reason than people aren't buying.

After all, how the heck would they know if I pirated a game on a jailbroken PSP? they would never be able to see that.

uhhhh no....if you visit torrent site you can find some PSP games that have WELL over 10,000 downloads.....piracy is VERY real on the PSP

When your game sales 100 copies and there's like 300 people online (made up numbers for example) it's obvious 200 people stole the game.
And PSP piracy is pretty big. Especially when there's people on ebay selling jail broken PSP's at regular cost, sometimes cheaper. It's pretty common thing. I've yet to meet someone who doesn't have a hacked PSP. And I've come across a lot of people with PSPs.

I have to tell you that you have no idea what you are talking about.

It is extremely easy to pirate on the PSP, i don't do it myself, but yes, i do know how to do it, and i have a custom firmware PSP.

the only thing stopping me from pirating games is a one click download at this point (to download the iso).

And emulators..

what are you talking about, there is a huge variety of very well working emulators out their for the ps1, gameboy games etc etc, even some decent n64 emulators.

Piracy is rampant on the PSP, it's a complete joke.

Aqua, my PSP has official firmware - there, you've met someone. ;)

$160 is a small price to pay for potentially thousands of dollars of free games.

It's because of piracy that PSP doesn't support trophies yet, and probably never will, which sucks.

I'm glad to see this but at the same time someone will get passed the code somehow.

No matter what you do, there is always someone who can get around it.

Yeah, but this gives them a 60 day waiting period!

So long as there is a wall, there will always be a way around, over, or even through said wall.

Using this analogy would make the Mongolians some of the greatest hackers around.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/153634

Actually Modnation Racers and the japanese version of Kingdom Hearts are already downloadable, hackers/pirate already fpund a way to avoid that 60 days thru several plugins that must be installed along the iso

@irot27 yeah that news broke yesterday

Tell that to the engineers behind the PS3!

I thought the PSP Go was the attempt by Sony to stop/curb piracy.

This is for regular PSP. I don't get why they used a Go for the picture. The Go has stopped piracy pretty well actually.

best bet.....make it so the game has to validate itself every week via the internet....I mean isn't everyone somewhere near a wifi connection these days?

on second thought nevermind,,,,,if that worked so Good PC software wouldn't get pirated nearly as much.....I just don't know what to tell them....but I do know that the PSP2 will most likely be download only because of piracy....and we can only hope they figure out how to combat it better then....I am curious as to how MS is going to combat it on WinPho7 tho...because the integrity of the entire GamerScore system is at risk

Perhaps they'll learn from the iPhone's mistake?

And it's not like they don't know how the iPhone got hacked. I mean, hackers are the biggest co-ck wavers around. They love to gloat about their work and spread it around.

I don't know about PSP2 going that route because of Piracy. I mean, people will just find a way around that too eventually.

I'm guessing they'll take what they learned in making the PS3 so hack-proof and apply similar concepts to the PSP. Sure it may not be on quite as large or effective a scale, but if they can at least thwart piracy for a few years, or make it so that it's really inconvenient to pirate a game, then I think it'll work.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see a sort of scaled back "mini" Cell processor in the next PSP for just such a reason.

The problem with internet verification is what happens on a day you dont have internet access. Shocker I know but it does happen. You force that restriction on someone and instantly piracy becomes the better option.

The problem with the 'Go is that it forgoes the ability to OWN your games. As downloads all you're doing is borrowing them for an extended period of time. You dont have the right to sell those games nor the ability and if at some point in the future the PSN doesnt exist you no longer have access to those games.

so what you are saying is since you don't have physical disc you don't own the games? if thats the case then you don't own ANY data that is on your computer right? Sorry but thats the way things are going....the Apple AppStore proves that people are ready to go digital only, Sony just has to get the prices in check and they will be fine

Fun fact, when you buy a game you don't own! In any sense other then you have the right to play it!

This is kind of unrelated but can you pirate games on PS3? It's not that I want to it just seems like it would be really hard considering the Blu-ray format.

The PS3, so far, has been unhackable. That's actually an amazing feat if you think about all the other devices out there and how they've already been hacked.

it isn't blu ray that makes it hard, it's the cell.

Why does the cell make it so hard?

The PS3 has been hacked, just an older firmware. Hence the whole big fuss about removing linux support, as that is how Geohot did it. It was all here on joystiq.

The PS3 has been hacked. It was just an older firmware, hacked via Other OS support by Geohot. Hence all that brouhaha with the 3.21 firmware removing Other OS support. It was all here on joystiq.

it wasn't hacked in the sense that any games were able to be pirated.

PS3 hasn't been hacked. Everything has to pass through encryption at every level of the system, which is locked away in the 7th core of the cell. All that part of the cell does is handle encrypting and decrypting code in real time, which is why it's off limits to developers.

Remember that originally the Cell had 8 cores, but devs only get to access 6. One is a mystery and the other is the crypto engine. Geohot's crappy "hack" never got full hypervisor access and it never will thanks to that part of the Cell. Without hypervisor access, your custom code is useless, you can't use the full abilities of the Cell or RSX, and basically, there's no point at all. You're still under the watchful eye of the hypervisor, and you can only do what it lets you do. All Geohot's hardware hack did was corrupt some blocks of RAM and allow for some code injection...but that code was still under hypervisor control/restrictions.

This really isn't related, again, but they should fix the ram problem like what they did with the N64. You can easily add about 1 gig of ram through the usb ports.

Sorry, I didn't realize.

"what are you talking about, there is a huge variety of very well working emulators out their for the ps1, gameboy games etc etc, even some decent n64 emulators."

Um, I was referring specifically to a PSP emulator... I know working emulators exist...

reply fail.

what are you talking about exactly?

@Brian

I believe he's talking about an actual PSP emulator, for PSP games.
And I think one DOES exist, might have to double-check on that though.

it exists, but I think JCPSP only plays 1 commercial game so far.

There's no real need for an emulator for the PSP as, like the DC, the PSP is basically an emulator for it's self.

okay so the latest PSP custom firmware is 5.50 gen. basically its the real psp firmware 5.50, except it's hacked. now as you may know, the current Sony psp firmware is 6.20. so you can't pirate any game that has been released since November 18, 2009, because it requires firmware 6.20.(well you can pirate it, but it won't play on you psp)

Until someone hacks the firmware... which seems to happen within a few months. Even if people can't play those games they'll still pirate them in the anticipation of that hack rather than pay money to play them now.

Incorrect. This is a known issue, so there are applications now that remove firmware checks from PSP ISOs, allowing any game to run on any firmware. So yes, any game, even the latest ones, can be run on firmware 5.50. Furthermore, PSN hacks are available that allow any firmware, pirated, too old, etc, to access PSN without issue. The 6.20 firmware hack is mostly irrelevant. As someone said here in the thread, if you can't go through a wall, go around it.

Even so, the 6.20 firmware has supposedly be hacked many times over, with videos and even datafiles to prove it, but no custom firmwares for it have been released.

well yes but but it took them until last week to figure out have to get kingdom hearts birth by sleep to work, and that came out in january. so yeah they will find a way around it but it will take them a few months. so that's why i think it's wierd how sony is saying "60 day shelf life" when it already was like that.

How much will Sony charge for this?

I don't think Sony is really in a position to be charging for this.

"Hey, you developed a game for our PSP. Unfortunately, hackers have completely compromised our system and so its over-run by people. IF you want it to sell loads of copies and not be pirated (for a few weeks at least), you have to buy this. Otherwise, you're screwed."

Unless of course you were making some fanboy comment about how Sony is trying to rip off its customers. In that case, you're an idiot.

Wow, was it snowing in here earlier or something?

That's a stupid question. Jesus should know the answer to that.

Man, I can't always be watching you guys! I have "urges" you know!

I kept telling people on the official PS3 Updates board that they were going to use these protection schemes, it was just a matter of time and I was told off, saying it was really easy to pirate the games.

Yes I KNOW it's really easy to pirate the games but these newer games such as Kingdom Hearts BBS took a gargantuan effort to crack and you don't know if it'll be the same exact process on the next game.

| 1 | 2 | Most Recent | Next 50 Comments

Sony offering PSP developers code to 'slow down' piracy

Reader Comments (55)

Posted: May 21st 2010 6:34PM ilunc said

Posted: May 21st 2010 6:41PM bunnyraven said

Posted: May 21st 2010 6:39PM AnderFREAK said

Posted: May 21st 2010 6:50PM Chris DPSN AggieCEO XBLThe Aggi said

Posted: May 21st 2010 6:50PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: May 21st 2010 6:51PM BrianH said

Posted: May 22nd 2010 4:59AM Faenix said

Posted: May 22nd 2010 4:01PM incendious said

Posted: May 21st 2010 6:41PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 21st 2010 6:42PM Spike Spiegel Humble Bounty Hun said

Posted: May 21st 2010 6:51PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: May 21st 2010 6:51PM sonicspike41 said

Posted: May 21st 2010 7:15PM irotmx said

Posted: May 21st 2010 7:38PM JosephBoggs said

Posted: May 22nd 2010 7:16PM Esposch said

Posted: May 21st 2010 6:44PM andrewpoe said

Posted: May 21st 2010 6:52PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: May 21st 2010 6:44PM Chris DPSN AggieCEO XBLThe Aggi said

Posted: May 21st 2010 6:48PM Chris DPSN AggieCEO XBLThe Aggi said

Posted: May 21st 2010 6:54PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: May 21st 2010 6:55PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: May 21st 2010 6:55PM sonicspike41 said

Posted: May 21st 2010 7:41PM PN04 said

Posted: May 21st 2010 7:47PM Chris DPSN AggieCEO XBLThe Aggi said

Posted: May 21st 2010 8:33PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: May 21st 2010 7:00PM AutobotIronhide said

Posted: May 21st 2010 7:10PM Wiizer said

Posted: May 21st 2010 7:12PM BrianH said

Posted: May 21st 2010 8:00PM AutobotIronhide said

Posted: May 22nd 2010 12:40AM MaJoR said

Posted: May 22nd 2010 12:44AM MaJoR said

Posted: May 22nd 2010 2:01AM BrianH said

Posted: May 22nd 2010 2:06AM afrosheen said

Posted: May 22nd 2010 9:38AM AutobotIronhide said

Posted: May 21st 2010 7:27PM AnderFREAK said

Posted: May 21st 2010 7:28PM AnderFREAK said

Posted: May 21st 2010 7:50PM BrianH said

Posted: May 21st 2010 8:09PM Helghast102 said

Posted: May 21st 2010 8:16PM AnderFREAK said

Posted: May 21st 2010 8:24PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: May 21st 2010 7:36PM JosephBoggs said

Posted: May 21st 2010 7:44PM PN04 said

Posted: May 22nd 2010 12:35AM MaJoR said

Posted: May 22nd 2010 11:10AM JosephBoggs said

Posted: May 21st 2010 8:01PM BigD145 said

Posted: May 21st 2010 8:21PM PhilipJWitow said

Posted: May 21st 2010 8:03PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 21st 2010 8:10PM AutobotIronhide said

Posted: May 21st 2010 8:18PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 21st 2010 8:37PM chrisredfield31 said

Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

WB conjures up Harry Potter for Kinect this fall

Featured Stories

Silver Lining: I Am Alive's unfeeling world

Game Of Thrones and the paradoxes of adaptation

Super Joystiq Podcast 004: 38 Studios meltdown, Gravity Rush, Civilization 5: Gods & Kings, Dragon's Dogma

Engadget

TUAW

Massively

WoW