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On X (formerly Twitter), a post claiming that a “pirate store” offering every PS5 and PS4 game for free had been created went viral, sparking a thread on 5ch’s Hardware/Industry (“Geha”) board. Posters brought up past precedents — PSP’s modchips and custom firmware (CFW), and the PS3 hack that stemmed from a leaked encryption key — and suggested this latest exploit works the same way, abusing a vulnerability in the console’s built-in firmware browser. Opinions split between optimists who think bans and legal action can contain the damage, and pessimists who argue that once a console’s hardware is cracked, there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle.
>The developers have built stores for PS5 and PS4 where every single game is free.
This is seriously way too messed up
Something’s gotta be done or PlayStation is going to be finished way sooner than expected
Source: x.com / Original post here
What people said
Yeah, but
realistically there's nothing to be done about it
When someone with nothing left to lose (a "muteki no hito," slang for people who have nothing left to lose and thus nothing holding them back) who actually has the skills snaps,
PS5, which was supposedly rock-solid on security, got totally cracked in just two months.
If they're going to ditch discs, fine — but only if it's for a legit reason like "profitability has tanked and we can't keep this up."
They'll probably just mass-produce stores with AI lol
Crush it and pirates just throw up another one right after — that's the usual playbook
Even if you get banned officially, you can just go play on the pirate store instead 😜
Honestly this would be the perfect excuse
It'd be one thing if it only hurt their own games,
but this is causing trouble for software publishers, and ultimately Nintendo and Microsoft too
and they'll just… leave it alone, right? lol
They probably will
That's exactly what happened with the PSP
Unless it's as easy as PSP modchips were, the numbers won't get that big — anyway it's a crime, so they should hurry up and get caught
Just hook it up to the pirate PS Store instead (´・ω・｀)
Hard to believe PSN, which has already leaked multiple times, hasn't had its data pulled too
The fact there's zero countermeasure this time is genuinely game over
Apparently it's a crack via the browser built into the firmware
Updated, patched ROMs will just circulate
Except your whole life gets "banned" by a massive damages claim
Realistically there are just too many people, it's not feasible
this PS5 all-games-free trick
isn't something only a handful of skilled people can pull off —
it's apparently easy enough that basically anyone can do it
It's that same thing elementary, middle, and high schoolers used to do with the PSP
Which is apparently why the PS5 Pro, with its huge storage, is selling like crazy
Unlike emulators, once a console hardware mod like this gets out, it's seriously brutal to stamp out
so how did it get this wide open in such a short time?
ttps://fpsjp.net/archives/540459
It all started here
They leaked the key, so there's nothing that can be done about it now
there are a ton of them where you can freely download PS1 through PS5 game data
The fact these sites never get shut down probably means suing them doesn't actually work
So the only real countermeasure left is locking down the console hardware itself
Switch 2 and Xbox seem to have that part nailed down perfectly,
but PS5 turned out to be shockingly full of holes
Sony, who left PSP's custom firmware alone
Nintendo, who sued modchip sellers left and right
The pirates have been watching that history closely
Since when???
Isn't it getting hacked way too fast?
Seriously, what are you doing, "Crapsony" (a derogatory pun combining "kuso"/crap with Sony)
If everyone can just play everything free on PS5,
multiplatform titles on every other console stop selling entirely
It's an issue that comes before encryption even enters the picture —
apparently it uses a vulnerability in the browser built into the firmware
Connect to the net, update to the latest firmware, fully factory-reset the console,
then disconnect from the net? And you can reliably crack it from the browser vulnerability — sounds like there's genuinely zero protection
If it needed some special firmware or elaborate ritual, fine, but since it's just a browser vulnerability, it's completely wide open
Otherwise there's no way those crypto mining farms in Ukraine could have existed
They probably just swapped out the entire OS
There's no real reason to keep using PlayStation's own gaming OS anyway
Steam started out as a service built on internet-distributed software in the first place — if the same thing could happen to it, I'd think today's Steam would've already been cracked wide open by now
But the fact this hasn't blown up publicly before probably just means there's this attitude of "it's fine to do whatever to Sony" — nobody's taking it seriously
Steam really was built by geniuses
Unlimited cloud save storage is impressive too
Guess they learned absolutely nothing from that
PS3 caused the biggest data breach in the company's history and PSN was down for months over it
Even if you add up all the personal info leaks people are making noise about now, it'd be a close match
Background and Key Points of This Topic
This isn’t the first time PS5 has faced unauthorized modding (piracy). Back in the PS3 era, a leaked encryption key escalated into a massive hack, and the PSP had modchips and custom firmware left unchecked for years. Drawing on that history, the thread pointed out that the ease of this latest method — “update the firmware, disconnect, then crack it via a browser vulnerability” — has spread to roughly the same accessibility as the old PSP mods. That said, the source here is a single post on X (formerly Twitter), with no official confirmation from Sony or any third party. The fact that both an encryption-key-leak theory and a browser-vulnerability theory are circulating at once shows this is still speculation for now. One point readers could easily misread is the idea that “every user automatically gets everything for free” — but as commenters noted, it requires manual firmware steps and disconnecting from the network, and online-only titles or updates likely need separate workarounds.
*This article excerpts and summarizes the 5ch (Hardware/Industry “Geha”) thread “The piracy scene finally gets its own pirate store, reaching its final form.”
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