Before generative artificial intelligence took off, the process of jailbreaking a video game console was a slow, tedious ordeal. That’s not the case anymore.
Within the PS5 homebrew scene on Reddit, the forums have been lit up with posts about PS5SX2, an app that lets jailbroken PS5s play PlayStation 2 games. It’s a big deal, given that Sony removed backward compatibility from its consoles starting with the release of the PS4 in 2013.
PS5SX2 is part of a larger wave of PS5 jailbreaks, which are coming at a furious pace in 2026.
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Version 1.00 of PS5SX2 had plenty of early bugs, with commenters trading fixes for crashes and missing-game errors. Within roughly two weeks, a 2.00 update had added frame generation and multi-disc support. Another post in the jailbreak community claimed that PS3 games can now run on jailbroken PS5s as well.
Additionally, there’s another public jailbreak called Relapse. Released in late September, the exploit chain was published by developer Nathan Fargo and works on firmware versions 7.00 through 13.60. The previous public jailbreak topped out at 12.70, so Relapse covers a big chunk of recent consoles. It works on any PS5 that hasn’t been updated to firmware 14.00, which Sony released on Sept. 16.
For decades, console jailbreaking moved slowly for a reason. As it’s both legally risky and technically demanding. In the U.S., circumventing a console’s copyright protection runs afoul of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The Librarian of Congress grants exemptions every three years for devices like smartphones and smart TVs, but consoles aren’t among them
Finding an exploit has also required deep knowledge of a console’s firmware, which historically limited the work to a small group of skilled hackers. So normally, hackers will find an exploit, release a jailbreak, Sony patches it, and hackers start back at the beginning.
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But that cycle is speeding up, and AI coding assistants may be part of the reason why. There’s no confirmation that the Relapse developers used AI, but it fits a broader pattern that has exploded over the past few weeks.
The AI decompilation boom
Decompilation is huge in the homebrew gaming scene at the moment. Decompiling means working backward from a game’s compiled code to rebuild readable unofficial PC ports of classics like Super Mario 64, and it traditionally took volunteers years of tedious work
From a technical standpoint, it’s a grueling process. In the context of video games, those are shipped in compiled code that consoles can run, but humans can’t easily read. However, AI is speeding up the tedious grunt work of doing so.
Hundreds of vibe-coded, AI-decompiled emulators and games have appeared in just the past couple of weeks, crediting Anthropic’s latest model, Claude Opus 5.5. That includes browser-based ports of games like Halo: Combat Evolved, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Skate 3, some of which Kotaku said run surprisingly well.
The results have also produced some truly unhinged mashups. One of the first to go viral added skateboarding from Skate to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, letting players kickflip across the shooter’s maps. Others have put Minecraft inside Elden Ring (and Grand Theft Auto V) and Mario Kart vehicles into Call of Duty Zombies.
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While fun stuff to be sure, not everyone is a fan. The developers behind the fan-made Zelda: Recompiled and Banjo: Recompiled projects have publicly rejected AI and called AI-generated knockoffs of their work disrespectful. Other critics say many of these AI ports come from amateurs with little programming experience, leaving behind a pile of buggy, broken releases.
Altogether, a faster jailbreak cycle isn’t much of a surprise. If AI tools can rebuild entire games from compiled code overnight, digging through console firmware for exploits starts to look a lot more approachable. It helps that AI agents like Claude thrive on verifiable loops, ie, being able to write, test, and repeat ad nauseam until it gets it right with no fatigue involved.
Gizmodo writes that this could be Sony’s Napster moment — an existential crisis for the gaming industry just like the music business faced in the early 2000s. It’s one thing to sue a bunch of hackers, but Sony doesn’t have much goodwill with the public at the moment. It helps, though, that jailbreaking a console requires having it in the first place, and that jailbreaking any console risks bricking it.
Given that RAMageddon is causing a GPU shortage, one might exercise caution, as a second-hand PS5 Pro could cost $1,300 or more.
TopicsArtificial IntelligenceCybersecurity
Chance Townsend is the General Assignments Editor at Mashable, covering tech, video games, dating apps, digital culture, and whatever else comes his way. He has a Master’s in Journalism from the University of North Texas and is a proud orange cat father. His writing has also appeared in PC Mag and Mother Jones.
In his free time, he cooks, loves to sleep, and greatly enjoys Detroit sports. If you have any tips or want to talk shop about the Lions, you can reach out to him on Bluesky @offbrandchance.bsky.social, by email at [email protected], or on Signal at 224-417-6628.
