It is rare for me to mention when Sony does something right, so let me do this today.

Many gamers have happily discovered that the 2 psp games Motorstorm Arctic Edge and Everybody’s Tennis, are finally back on the PSN store, and, hopefully for those who had previously bought these games, in their download lists.

Motorstorm and Everybody’s Tennis had been respectively used by hackers Teck4 and wth(a.k.a. Yosh) to run unsigned code (homebrews) on the PS Vita, which led to the release of VHBL, a piracy-free homebrew loader for Sony’s new handheld. Sony quickly removed the games from their online store, and patched, in Vita’s firmware 1.65, the exploits used in these games. And we were left wondering how long it would take before the games are made available again on the store.

Lots of people, unaware of the technical ins and outs of these hacks, were also afraid that these games would never come back on the store. Others shared their anger against hackers (and against me for publicly disclosing both vulnerabilities), as they had paid Sony for a game they couldn’t play anymore.

Thankfully, Sony doesn’t always get everything wrong, and in this case they did the right thing: pull the games temporarily to prevent the hack from spreading, patch the firmware, then put the games back. Except for their lack of communication on the matter, I believe, in hindsight, that it was the best way they could handle the situation.

It goes without saying that if you are on firmware 1.65 or above, VHBL for Motorstorm or Everybody’s Tennis will not work anymore, so do not buy these games if you expect them to lead you to homebrew, the hacks have been patched. That being said, these are both very good games 🙂

We also have ongoing plans to release a new version of VHBL, which will be compatible with firmware 1.67. As for the two previous versions, it uses a vulnerability in a psp game.