Yesterday we reported on how AI use seems to be driving a sudden abundance of unauthorized game ports—and it seems this isn’t the only (potentially) AI-related headache plaguing console manufacturers.
For decades, manufacturers have played a game of whack-a-mole with people trying to jailbreak their devices. The term “jailbreaking” refers to finding a way to gain root access to a device, allowing it to do things the manufacturer’s operating system prevents (like running pirated games or emulating other consoles). This requires circumventing the console’s DRM, and in the USA, at least, it’s illegal.
As an aside, if you’re wondering why jailbreaking your own device is illegal, it’s because of the way the Digital Millennium Copyright Act works. The relevant provision of the Act is 17 USC s1201, which places a blanket ban on “circumvent[ing] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a [protected] work”—but also requires that every three years, the Librarian of Congress must submit a register of works exempt from this ban. The meaning of “a work” in this context is pretty broad, covering everything from physical devices to movies and songs.
The current register is here, and it contains specific exemptions for smartphones, smart TVs, “voice assistant devices,” and routers—but not for consoles. In fact, while there’s a more general exemption for repair or maintenance of “lawfully acquired devices,” it goes out of its way to place specific restrictions on consoles: “For video game consoles, ‘repair’ is limited to repair or replacement of a console’s optical drive and requires restoring any technological protection measures that were circumvented or disabled.”
So it’s pretty clear that in the USA, at least, jailbreaking a console is very much illegal. It’s also difficult: it requires an intimate knowledge of the console’s firmware and software, and it’s historically been the preserve of a small number of people with both the technical ability and time to find exploitable vulnerabilities, and the motivation to do so despite their actions risking a serious legal smackdown.
This explains the aforementioned game of whack-a-mole has proceeded fairly slowly: hackers exploit vulnerabilities, manufacturers push firmware updates to patch vulnerabilities, hackers spend months finding new exploits, repeat. This slow pace has also limited jailbreaks to old firmware versions, meaning that anyone jailbreaking their device has had to avoid updating, and that anyone with newer firmware wanting to jailbreak has had to wait for a new exploit to be found (or shell out for an old console on eBay, etc.)
This all might be about to change, though, because the cycle seems to be accelerating. Last week, a new exploit for the PS5 was released, and it works right through version 13.60 of the PS5’s firmware. That version was released in July, so it’s pretty recent, and it’s already being exploited to the fullest. (Coincidentally enough, this week also saw PS3 emulator RPCS3 ported to the PS4, allowing users to play a whole bunch of old PS3 games on that console.)
Without talking to the hackers responsible, it’s impossible to know why PS5 jailbreaking has advanced so quickly of late, but it’s hard not to wonder whether AI coding assistants are playing a role. If so, console manufacturers could find themselves facing a dilemma similar to the one that confronted the RIAA and MPAA in the 2000s: It’s one thing to sue Napster. It’s quite another to sue grandmothers and children, especially if doing so does nothing to stem the tide of sharing and downloading.
Similarly, it’s one thing to go after a small group of hackers looking for vulnerabilities in your software. It’s quite another when pretty much anyone can figure out that process for themselves. That’s not the case yet, but if we end up in a situation where any new firmware release is followed by a jailbreak in hours, rather than weeks or months, it’s hard to see how Sony might go about maintaining the walls around its garden.
The collapse of those walls would be welcomed by plenty of people. After all, it’s your console, and it’s hard to argue against the idea that you should be able to do whatever you want with it. But it’s interesting to consider what might happen if jailbreaking expands from a niche pursuit into a common activity. The economics of exclusivity are presumably baked into both console pricing and the budgets for console-exclusive games. Take Grand Theft Auto VI: assuming it remains console-exclusive, how many people will buy a new console just to play it? If console exclusivity effectively goes out the window, so does a significant source of revenue for Sony and Microsoft.
To be clear: none of this is an argument for the preservation of consoles’ walled garden model of computing. In a lot of ways, consoles are an anachronism, a holdover from an era in which it made sense to manufacture devices with specialized hardware for gaming, an era when a Super Nintendo designed specifically to render sprites on CRTs could do so better than a contemporary PC. Today, the PlayStation 5 runs an AMD CPU and an AMD Radeon GPU. It’s a specialized PC with custom hardware and a mightily restrictive operating system. That model may well prove less and less sustainable as computing and entertainment continue to evolve.
