It’s been quite a long time since the last VHBL release. We did have some VHBL release for firmwares 3.10 and 3.12, but it was a bit rushed and non practical: the exploitable games for 3.10 had been patched in 3.12 and became useless, which is why they got announced, and the 3.12 release was for a game that had already been removed from the PSN: pawapuro yakyu 2012.

Some hackers have also recently experimented releasing their exploits semi-privately through some contests, where 10 random lucky winners would get to receive a private exploit. In my personal opinion, these attempts were overall a disaster, with leaks or people complaining that the whole thing was unfair. We know that ninja releases are not perfect: people sometimes leak the information before we have the time to announce the exploit publicly. But at least, Ninja releases are an attempt to let everyone know about an exploit publicly, while giving a headstart to our own community. It’s not perfect, but I think it’s fair.

In this context, Japanese developer 137210 (who is already behind many VHBL ports, including the PawaPuro exploit mentioned above) has contacted me with a new exploit for which he ported VHBL. And he intends to release this exploit for the latest Vita firmware 3.15.

I have some very good and some slightly bad news with this exploit. The bad is that the game is only available on the JP PSN Store. You will need a Japanese account on your Vita to enable this exploit. This is a pain and I know this would typically mean lots of people won’t even bother, but maybe the good news will change your mind: according to 173210, this exploit, just like the pawapuro exploit, cannot easily be patched by Sony. It’s been confirmed recently that the pawapuro exploit still works on firmware 3.15, which tends to confirm this theory.

In other words, there’s a strong chance that people getting this exploit will be able to have VHBL running on their Vita, and still be able to update to the latest firmware whenever they want. Making this a very particular exploit in the history of the Vita and VHBL.

We will be having a ninja release for this exploit very soon. If you haven’t done so yet, please create an account on our forums at /talk, and check the forums on a daily basis. Eventually the game will be announced publicly, but remember that the public announce always marks a countdown of a few hours before Sony removes the exploited game from their stores.

Please remember that the devs in our community could always make the choice to keep their exploits for themselves and enjoy their own private homebrew-enabled Vita. Comments along the lines of “I’d prefer a Native vita hack” will be appropriately made fun of, or answered with an obligatory sarcastic tone such as “thanks for volunteering, show us how it’s done”.