The recent video posted by Team Typhoon about their “we won’t release it” HEN for the PSP Go has been generating lots of *** for the last few days. I’m ***. I could write this on some forum and add to the hundreds of comments that can be found on MForMature, QJ, or PSPGen.

But I’ve got a blog which allows me to write, complain and whine with other people actually reading what I write, and my post not getting lost in hundreds of others. I rock, ’cause I’m better than you 😛

I’ve read all the comments on the MForumature thread. Yes, all of them. At the time I write this, there are 189 of them. What can I say, I love dramas…

At first I was disappointed that team Typhoon decided not to release their hack, but I believe they have their reasons. As a fellow developer I’ve encountered many times users who treated me like sh#t, forgetting that they were getting hundreds of hours of my work for free. These people, that we can call “ungrateful users” always want more, insult you instead of giving constructive feedback, and are usually the reason devs quit doing their stuff after a while. There are lots of them.

I was then surprised at the reaction of one of the members of Team Typhoon, who basically insulted everyone in the thread, which more or less ruined the point of the whole thing. When you want to prove to others that they are ***, a rule of thumb is to not act like one yourself.

This is when I realized the reason I have been working on Wagic for more than 2 years now. Even if there are lots of “parasites” in the PSP “scene”, there are also lots of great people. In the two years I’ve been working on Wagic, I’ve had the opportunity to work with dozens of very talented people, from various horizons, not necessarily devs. People who give feedback, ideas, help any way they can…

Granted, I’m not a genius hacker, I only code homebrew, there’s way less pressure than for people who work on hacks. But still, my point is that for 100 dumb users, there’s 1 cool guy who’s gonna change your life. And I believe that it’s worth working for that one guy.

Another thing that happens frequently in that kind of drama thread is people stating that “it was better years before”. Actually it wasn’t. There’s always been such drama in the PSP scene. Here’s a quote that I like from the libtiff mailing list . This was posted when the first tiff hack for the PSP was revealed, back in 2005:

If only these people spent as much time on actual good documentation and specification of facts and exact vulnerability, as they do on fighting amongst themselves in SMS type language of wannabee hackers, we’d have a chance to know what is actually going on.

That was the Noobz era back then, and apparently from an external point of view the PSP scene was already full of ***. Yes, there was probably a time when hacking the PSP was more fun and less drama. That was probably when the only way to get one was to be a huge geek with access to japanese imports… in other words, when the PSP wasn’t a mainstream product… like…for the 3 first months after it was out. If you don’t want drama, go to the openpandora. Oh, and stop thinking all the “good devs are gone”. Yes, lots of good devs have moved on. But lots of good ones appeared recently too.

Why is there so much drama in the PSP scene? Well my theory is that the PSP is the most active console in terms of underground. I ran a few funny google searches…note that everyone can use google to backup their claims, so these results are probably worthless, but they’re still interesting:

“psp homebrew” gives me more than 2.3 million results in google. “DS Homebrew” has less than half of it (if you look for “PSP ISO” or “DS ISO” though, the number of results are roughly equivalent :12 and 13 million). I was recently discussing with Magixien, webmaster of PSPGen, one of the biggest “console underground” website out there, who told me that no other console is close to what the PSP scene is in terms of activity.

It is also funny to see that the first results for “DS Scene” and “Wii Scene” in google are sites that promote pirated games downloads. “PSP Scene” gives links to more serious sites that talk about PSP releases, hacks, and homebrews. I won’t give names, try it by yourself. Does it mean that piracy is the main goal for hackers on all consoles but the PSP? Well I doubt it, but it’s still a strange result…

What’s my point you ask? I don’t know, I forgot while I was typing… I guess, it’s: stop whining. If you want hacks for piracy, just go to heck, we don’t like you. If you think the PSP scene was better 3 years ago, nobody’s asking you to stay, you’re spoiling the party. If you think you’re better than others because you’re a hacker or one of their beta testers, just learn humility, it won’t hurt you.

If you disagree with me, I have the power to erase your comments, I’m almighty, muahahahaha… meh, ok, you can post…