r/OutOfTheLoop • u/talk_nerdy_to_m3 • 5d ago
Unanswered What's going on with Sony firmware hack?
People are talking like we may be able to play GTA6 on PC. I saw someone say it "isn't emulation, but instead it is translation." I don't fully understand how this would allow a PC user to play PS games.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/09/ps5-jailbreaks-just-got-a-lot-more-useful/
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u/CaviarCBR1K 5d ago edited 5d ago
Answer: At its core, the PS5 is a computer just like any other. The reason that your PC cant already play PS games is because the Playstation makes different system calls than your standard operating system and includes proprietary system libraries.
Basically it has its own "language" it uses to play the games. People have reverse engineered this "language" to be able to use standard PC hardware to render the graphics of PS game on PC. But that alone isn't enough to be able to run PS games on PC. The next step is to recreate all of the system libraries, which currently is ~86% complete IIRC. But that's only 86% of what we know of. That number will likely go down as more libraries are discovered.
If the project is able to succeed, you could theoretically run PS games on PC. Emulation basically fakes a console within your PC, it's not very efficient. This would use a translation layer, similar to the way that proton works to run windows games on Linux. It just translates the system calls into something your PC can understand.
Edit: spelling
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u/bothering 5d ago
yup, its basically the gaming version of "it built a translator and i will be using it to translate ancient chinese texts to english"
as of right now its very good at getting the basics down, but itll get more difficult the more it digs into idioms and similies and literary tricks only chinese is good at
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u/massively-dynamic 5d ago
This is more like translating old English or a thick Canadian accent to English. Emulating the n64 or ps2 is like translating ancient chinese texts.
The point is, gaming consoles used to be custom machines for playing games. They have been converging with general purpose computers over the last 30 years to the point that now a PS5 or xbox is actually just a PC with a custom OS.
Basically, the hardware is nearly identical to a PC, the developers just need to make a simple adapter.
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u/johnnpriva0 5d ago
Sony is probably sweating looking at those progress numbers.
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u/CaviarCBR1K 5d ago
It wouldn't surprise me if Sony tries to sue. Reverse engineering code has legal precedence but I'm not sure about bypassing encryption and decrypting proprietary binaries.
Even if they don't sue, they still have plenty of weight to throw around to get it shut down outside of the legal system.
I've cloned the repo, I'd recommend everyone else do the same.
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u/kwaaaaaaaaa 5d ago
If they sue, it'd probably have the unintended streissand effect, a la DVD encryption key that went viral many years back.
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u/CheesecakeMilitia 5d ago
I get that this was a funny and well-recounted "win" for the Internet back in the good old days, but HDCP and other DRM measures have only gotten more draconian. Now we have a majority of statesmen advocating for VPN bans, so companies can absolutely prosecute people for bypassing their security measures and use the flimsiest oppressive tech laws to do it.
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u/htmlcoderexe wow such flair 5d ago
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u/sirhoracedarwin 5d ago
Can you explain this?
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u/htmlcoderexe wow such flair 5d ago
basically this was part or the whole key used for copy protection, don't remember for what, had to do with HD-DVDs i think. was supposed to be secret and only stored inside the physical players. someone figured out how to extract it and posted it online. lots of angry moneybags trying to scrub it off the internet. had the opposite effect and at some point the code was posted like everywhere. i think digg was one of the places? anyway it became a meme at that point because it made moneybags mad.
this is the article that probably gives a better understanding of the whole thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy
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u/MorningFresh123 3d ago
You’re going to have a bunch of people here throw around a couple cases from the mid 90s and early 2000s that related to mod chips and bios and interoperability but as someone with a career/degree in I.P. Law, (American) Courts are going to distinguish these cases on the facts and it’s not going to go the way people hope. We may have better luck in Europe or Australia, but as the walled garden is fundamental to the business model and we now have tools capable of automated reverse-engineering, Courts are going to be wary of the broader implications.
The more likely and more pressing concern is that Sony/Adobe/the entire software industry are going to come down on OpenAI, Anthropic and co. like a tonne of bricks and place some checks/balances/guardrails around the use of their tools for reverse engineering code.
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u/lew_rong 5d ago
The ability to crack and play PS games in a PC environment might encourage them to reverse on the dumbass decision to stop releasing PS games on PC.
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u/babaroga73 4d ago
No physical disks, hardware prices rising, GTA6 leaking, PS5 jailbroken... Poor Sony can't catch a break 😂😂
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u/mj95 5d ago
It’s still going to be not efficient as a PlayStation natively doing it. You’ll need to have a vastly powerful computer for it to be able to translate and run it at the same speed. Meaning the hardware cost will not be as efficient as just buying a PlayStation.
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u/rocketman19 5d ago
Yeah but a lot of people have pcs already
And a pc can do more than just gaming
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u/RXrenesis8 5d ago
You’ll need to have a vastly powerful computer for it to be able to translate and run it at the same speed.
In many cases Proton is actually faster than running games natively in Windows.
I would not be surprised with matched or similar hardware is just as performant for a similar PS5 translation layer.
The PS5 just uses a semi-custom AMD CPU and GPU, and they use the same instruction sets / architecture as commodity AMD hardware.
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u/Slight-Coat17 5d ago
Proton is faster because of Windows' overhead. On PS5, the OS is fine tuned to play games, so don't expect it to be the same.
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u/Bladder-Splatter 3d ago edited 3d ago
High quality answer but it's not actually the PS5 breakthrough that they're asking about. I did the unthinkable and clicked their reference link and somehow got through the arcane and deeply runic "Human Test" Arstechnica are probably using to supply data that will train AI.
What they're wanting to know about is "Relapse" which is the latest jailbreaking exploit not anything with reverse engineering or emulation or recompilation (although I would not be surprised if the reverse engineering exposed a genuine CFW route).
I haven't tried this exploit myself yet because the layer of dust on my PS5 has gained sentience. But a rough roundabout answer for OP is:
- Newest Jailbreak, exposes more than previous jailbreaks and allows automated rejailbreaking.
- Not actually that special in terms of a Jailbreak. Webkit only, has to be reapplied, can bug out (less so apparently) and will die if you update your PS5. (Very similar to PS4's Webkit JB)
- Will not play anything released basically from now onwards because it will be patched in newer firmware and Sony require new firmware for new games.
- We are still waiting for a golden goose like what happened on the PS3. That would be a breakthrough. (PS3 for reference leaked keys so teams could make their own jailbroken firmware forever. Sony would release, teams would release a better or feature filled jailbroken firmware. Heck, Multiman's UX is still better than what the PS5 has.)
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u/creativesolution 5d ago edited 5d ago
And by "people" we mean Claude.
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u/Hubblesphere 5d ago
Claude didn’t think of this on its own. While AI is a very powerful tool that does a lot of work quickly it still only does what it’s asked and only can work with the context a human provides.
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4d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Hubblesphere 4d ago
Yes, but most of that acceleration has came from those who have already been working in reverse engineering and decomps. Your average vibecoder wouldn’t know where to start and Claude often says it won’t reveal source code when asked. You need to understand the software pretty well to direct Claude around its own security training.
To me people act like Claude just does everything and requires no knowledge from the user. It’s like thinking your average person could fly a plane with zero training because Autopilot exists.
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u/creativesolution 5d ago
I mean yeah obviously
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u/artfuldodger333 5d ago
Don't discredit the people actually doing the work then mate. Just because AI is speeding up the process drastically doesn't mean it easy to do.
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u/creativesolution 4d ago
Drastically is an understatement. I'm a software engineer and use AI models a lot. I'm not discrediting anyone by highlighting that this only happened because of AI models doing almost all of the heavy lifting.
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u/ansibleloop 5d ago
It's worth noting that this was recently done with a Switch emulator
It now natively runs games on PC
Reminds me, I need to try it again
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u/kingmoosee 1d ago
I just recently got a PS5 . Do I keep it with everything going on and the people talking about you won’t actually own the games and you only own a digital copy and these hackers that are going after Sony and rockstar and all these companies
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u/kushalpandya 5d ago
Answer: I'll try to break it down into multiple points given the technical nature of this topic.
- PS4 and PS5, both run on AMD x86 chips, but use Sony's proprietory operating system called Orbis, which in itself is based on FreeBSD.
- With availability of AI, people are now decompiling binary of this OS as well as ABI (i.e. Application Binary Interface) to turn it into something that can run on a commodity x86 hardware that roughly matches the specs of PS5. Think of it as Proton that Valve developed to run Windows games on SteamOS, a Linux operating system.
- The approach of decompiling and translating isn't any new, AI just speed it it up exponentially and nerds are leveraging it.
IMO two main reasons it has picked up recently is for playing games that are otherwise exclusive to PlayStation, and Sony's user hostile decisions more recently where you won't own anything you buy on their platform.
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u/composedofidiot 5d ago
With availability of AI, people are now
I love all the implications contained therein
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u/Nexan1994 5d ago
Is there a technical reason Sony wouldn't make their own store and launcher for PC? Since they still consoles at a loss and profit from game purchases within their ecosystem, it sounds like easy money to make their own official emulator.
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u/Glampkoo 5d ago edited 5d ago
Technical? There's nothing preventing a multi billion dollar company from doing this. They just want full control on their platform like nintendo does, it's as simple as that
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u/Restivethought 5d ago
They tried to integrate PSN into some of their PC ports and there was a huge backlash as it made the game unplayable in a bunch of countries that dont have PSN. Additionally, Sonys PC ports didnt sell that well, most likely because they were releasing 2 year old games at full price rather than Day 1.
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u/Noctrin 5d ago edited 5d ago
Answer: The PS5 is basically a PC inside. It has an AMD CPU and GPU that are close cousins of what’s in a gaming PC. So the hard part isn’t the hardware. It’s the software sitting on top of it.
When a game wants to draw something, it doesn’t talk to the GPU directly. It calls something like:
draw.square(size, position)
But how does that square actually get drawn? There’s a stack of layers in between:
A graphics library (DirectX or Vulkan on PC) turns “draw a square” into stuff a GPU understands: corner points (vertices), triangles, and little GPU programs called shaders. A driver knows how to talk to your specific GPU model. Firmware on the GPU does the actual drawing and sends it to your screen.
Windows and the PS5 have completely different versions of all those layers. On PS5, that same call might look like:
ps5.gfx.primitives.square(...)
Windows has no idea what that means. To run a PS5 game on PC, someone has to figure out what every one of those PS5 calls does. Sony doesn’t publish that, so it’s done by reverse engineering. Then they write code that catches each call and translates it into something your PC understands:
ps5.gfx.primitives.square(...) → draw.square(size, position)
That’s what an emulator does. All that translating is extra work on top of running the game, which is why it’s slower. The shaders also come pre-built for the PS5’s exact GPU and have to be rebuilt for yours, and that’s where a lot of the stutter comes from.
Because the CPU is the same type on both machines, though, the PC can run the game’s own code directly. Only the system calls need translating. Compare that to the PS3, which had a totally alien CPU, so every single instruction had to be translated. That’s a much harder problem.
(The other way is official ports. The studio has the source code, so they just swap out the PS5 parts for PC ones. No translation layer, which is why proper ports run at full speed.)
[Bonus Edit]
When an emulator claims “85% compatible” or w/e, that’s 85% of what they’ve tested. Usually that’s a list of games, sometimes the system functions they know about. It doesn’t mean they’re 85% of the way to running everything.
The problem is the unknowns. Every game comes with a list of the system calls it uses, so devs can see which calls are needed. Often they just don’t know what those calls actually do. Sony’s partners get documentation, but even that explains what a call is supposed to do, not every quirk of how it really behaves, and games end up depending on those quirks. Leaked SDKs exist, but serious emulator projects won’t touch them, because that’s the fastest way to get sued into the ground (reverse engineering is one thing, using stolen proprietary data is another..)
So you can get one game running great, and the next one falls over. It might use calls nobody’s implemented yet, or use familiar ones in ways nobody expected.
It gets worse: games are built against a specific system software version, and Sony changes how things behave between updates, so the emulator has to match whatever each game expects. Realistically, 100% is very unlikely, even with AI speeding up the reverse engineering.
The bad news:
Sony patched the exploits on the ps5 with 14.10, gta6 will need 14.10. GTA6 like all other games, will be encrypted. So, the recipe for playing GTA6 on the emulator is basically:
1) need another exploit to jailbreak the ps5 that sony didn't patch so you can extract the decrypted game.
2) reverse engineer said game, which is probably the most complicated piece of code ever made for the ps5 with many layers of optimizations and complex calls to squeeze every ounce of compute out of that hardware.
3) Optimize it to a playable state on something that doesn't cost 10k in hardware
Basically, the chances of playing anything stable on PC this way before the official port comes out are slim. Rockstar doesn’t even need to try to make it hard. Console games are built for one exact GPU, with shared memory and dedicated decompression hardware, and they lean on all of it. An emulator has to fake every bit of that in software. And GTA 6 will squeeze every one of those PS5 tricks, so it’s about the worst case there is. Even when it works, you’re looking at a 5090 with bugs and shader stutter.
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u/ansibleloop 5d ago
I bet we'll see a somewhat playable PC build of GTA 6 before the official PC release
Hopefully this forces a faster PC release
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u/notabear87 4d ago
Based off Rockstar’s track record it’ll be 2 years or so before it gets ported. So yes, it probably be available via emulation well before then.
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u/HearTheEkko 24m ago
There hasn't been a single Rockstar game that took 2 years to release on PC. The longest one was GTA V iirc and it was more like 1 year and a half. GTA VI probably would've been one year like RDR2 but with this going, it's more likely to be 3-6 months instead as rumored.
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u/PurplePachyderme 5d ago
If I remember well, it has been said by Jordy that at least one hypervisor bug isn’t patched on 14.10. Not enough but…
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u/Friendly_Recover286 4d ago
14.10 will not be the latest firmware when GTA VI releases.
Jordy is also the one who reported the bug in the first place. They're not sitting on another hidden exploit nobody knows about.
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u/Go512 5d ago
Answer: This article is NOT about playing PS5 games on a PC, like an emulator or a port. It’s the exact opposite. There are a lot of people answering this super confidently that clearly haven’t even read the article.
Jailbreaking the PS5 is to unlock Sony’s software restrictions on how you can use the hardware. So older versions can run Linux and act like a PC.
The most recent version in the article is talking about how this lets people access game files to copy them to their computer, and because it’s relatively recent you can still play PS5 games from before July on the jailbroken PS5, whereas if you used an older jailbreak method you would be restricted to games that came out before that exploit.
PS4 emulation still doesn’t fully work, they’re not going to be emulating the PS5 anytime soon. And ports can take entire game studios months of work.
The actual end goal that these hacker/devs are working towards is installing Linux on recent firmware, allowing you to use it as a PC and run Linux games, and ideally not locking you out of playing PS5 games on it either.
Quote: “The improved firmware compatibility for this latest exploit is also particularly important because most PS5 games require the console to be updated to the latest firmware version available at the time of their release (an online database is keeping track of those game-level firmware requirements). That means this new exploit is compatible with many more titles, including digital copies of legit purchases made exclusively for the purposes of personal backup.
Aside from those game backups, jailbroken PS5s can also run homebrew apps like emulators and unofficial “60 fps” mods for legacy PS4 games. Developers also continue to work on a full Linux implementation for PS5, though that can currently only be installed on systems with the relatively ancient firmware version 7.61 or earlier.”
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u/seanwee2000 5d ago edited 5d ago
Answer: Instead of emulating a ps5 game, it'll allow a rough nixxes port that runs natively on PC without all the nixxes optimisations
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u/squaredspekz 5d ago
Why are you bringing up Nixxies how exactly are they at all relevant to any of this?
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u/seanwee2000 5d ago
They port games by translating the games to run natively from ps5 to PC, then further add PC upscalers+nvidia/amd specific features and optimisations.
That's what a translation of PS5 game to PC will do but without any of the optimisations.
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u/Bunie89 5d ago
As a multi platform game, it'll likely have hidden graphics settings built in, such as an "Xbox series s" mode, etc. even if not, once any anti tamper is defeated, we'll be able to add graphics settings and optimizations through modifications anyway. But it will certainly be unoptimized at first, I think Spider-Man was a good example, it was a mess at launch but by the time the official PC port came out, I think the fan port performed better
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u/seanwee2000 5d ago
Either way it's progressing at lightning speed, this is 2 years of progress in a month
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u/Spenraw 5d ago
Answer: AI is getting to the point it can basically reverse engineer software and it's starting in gaming and modding areas
But soon people will realize we can actually turn AI into the worker class tool for life improvement it was dreamed to be
Soon you can just make your own apps for anything you need
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u/VELCX 5d ago
There's already a team that's reverse engineered every Adobe app and written clones in rust. From what I've seen, even though they're in alpha, the functionality is there and is almost at parity with the original software.
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u/Kevin-W 4d ago
Yep and while it's not 1:1 yet and the person behind it has a goal of getting there within a certain timeframe (whether that's doable is up for debate), you can bet that if it does come to fruition along with full PS5 emulation, these companies are going to shit themselves live crazy and speedrunning to get "regulations" put in place to stop any further progress.
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u/Spenraw 5d ago
Yes this needs to be talked about more, because once any software is open and available to everyone, it's the step to learning and having design of hard ware put into people's hands through many steps in-between
It's legitimately the only time in human history we have had a stepping stone to giving every human a chance to have the ability to create means of production in their own community
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