Ok, so, since the PSN maintenance is being postponed, there is no reason for me to not give the name of the game used by Teck4 for his exploit:

The Game is Motorstorm Arctic Edge, also known as Motorstorm Raging Ice in Japan. It is available for 19.99 euro on most European Playstation Stores, 15.99 Pounds in the UK, and for 3800 yen on the Japanese store. Note for North American readers: that game, despite being available on the US Store, is marked as not compatible with the Vita in the US. People who have bought it in the US and tried to transfer it to their vita have failed as far as I know, which is why a few days ago I recommended people in the US to get a European PSN account.

Now what’s next?

Well it’s simple and stressful at the same time: I’m giving you guys a couple days to buy a copy of that game if you think VHBL is worth it (and assuming you trust that I’m not lying), and then I’ll release the VHBL files. There are pros and cons to this “2 steps” release. The cons are that you have to trust me, and there’s a possibility Sony actually patches/patched something without me knowing it, the pros are that I don’t think Sony will remove the game from their store until they actually have something to patch, so I think this gives you guys a couple days to buy the game. Or, you can wait until I release the files and other people confirm it works, at which point you run the risk that Sony patches the exploit and/or removes the game from the store before you can even buy it.

Now, let me be clear once again: buy the game if you want to play it, I have no way to guarantee VHBL will work for you, I can just tell that a few days ago this was confirmed to work by a few testers. Also keep in mind that VHBL gives you no iso, no special access to the Vita hardware, just a limited PSP homebrew experience on your vita. If like me you think it’s fun, then you might be interested. Or, if you think that 20 euros is a fair price for one of the best PSP games, then, well, just consider VHBL as a “bonus”.

VHBL has been confirmed to work on firmware 1.61. If your console asks you to update to firmware 1.62 or something, I cannot guarantee it will still work. It is also recommended, after you bought the game, to be paranoid and disconnect your console from the network, and to install openCMA. Again, there are lots of unknown things going on with the Vita, it is impossible for me to tell if this will work for everyone.

As far as I know, there are 5 versions of this game out there. I ported VHBL to 4 of them, and I am sure the fifth one is vulnerable too, but I couldn’t find any place selling or “distributing” it, so I couldn’t port the exploit to it. That being said, it should be “doable” if somebody can get a copy, to port the exploit to that version as well.

Finally, for those who want proof, here’s a video:

I want to thank the people who made this release go as smoothly as possible, especially Teck4 and Mamosuke, HBL devs (in particular m0skit0 and JJS, thanks for lurking on the scene for so long, you guys are the real deal!) the mods at /talk who have helped a lot over the past week, the handful of devs/testers who know how to keep a secret (you know who you are), but also the thousands of /talk users who, for some of them, have been knowing the game’s name for several days now, and haven’t leaked anything. You guys are truly an awesome community, you can of course now go ahead and let your friends know, or brag about how you’ve known about the game for a while and hold the secret. It was so far an awesome experiment, let’s hope the result will be worth it!

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