The fallout & Modern Warfare 2

Initially there were of course reports about other operating systems running on PS3s, followed by the release of a number of emulators for older gaming consoles. These are the kind of homebrew things that fail0verflow claim to have had in mind, however there have been some negative things as well.

On the 14th of January it was reported by CVG that a homebrew application had been released allowing users to give themselves all the trophies for a game as soon as they put it into their system, and then sync those trophies into their account on the PSN. Admittedly some games did not work with the app which is called ‘PS3 Unlocker’ however it appears that the majority of games do. This effectively renders the trophy system broken in terms of how it is supposed to be used.

Perhaps the most devastating use of the hack beyond piracy so far is the damage to Call of Duty 4, and COD: Modern Warfare 2. These two games both use the platform’s security as their sole protection, and since the PS3 is now broken wide open, then so are these two games, and probably a number of other titles. Players of MW2 have been reporting having their stats manipulated to such extremes as finishing a multiplayer game to find their character stats all dropped to zero.

Infinity Ward’s community manager Rob Bowling released a statement explaining the situation and admitting that there isn’t anything Infinity Ward can do to rectify the situation using patches and it will continue to be a problem until Sony comes up with a solution. His suggestion to people who are worried is to play exclusively with friends and avoid online matchmaking, which effectively kills the multiplayer mode. Luckily Treyarch’s Call Of Duty: Black Ops utilizes different security measures so it is as yet not compromised. (You can read a more in-depth report about the CoD situation on VG247)