A couple more PS Vita warez releases surfaced on the intertubes over the weekend. One (the binding of Isaac), allegedly a leak from one of the Team FreeK members, and the other one (htoL#NiQ) which apparently originated from the same person who had previously released two other PS Vita warez games last week.

The release of the Binding of Isaac happened on 4chan, by someone nicknamed “~~FreeK”. Given the anonymity of users on 4chan, there is no easy way to tell if this was Team FreeK’s official release or a leak of their work. In any case, some of the prx files in that release seem to indicate that Team FreeK’s tool “Vitamin” was used to perform the dump. Team FreeK have made no special announcement on their twitter account

The other game was Japanese game htoL#NiQ, allegedly released on Chinese forums, apparently by the same person who released Tokyo Xanadu and Odin Sphere last week. Fans have been fast at providing English-translated versions of the game, a few hours after the Japanese version was released.

Full fledged piracy now appears inevitable on the PS Vita, with two distinct groups apparently willing to make those warez releases, plus an undisclosed additional number of people with the technique to do it.

According to my sources, the warez release of the game does not ship with all the goodies of the Yomawari/htol#NiQ Collector’s edition. The choice is yours to support the developers or not

As usual for piracy related talks, I apologize but will not provide any link to the sources.

A side note: there was some minor controversy over the weekend on how I show skepticism about the “Chinese hacker” and his/her ability to dump vita games, while I seem to give way more credit to other groups. The reason is simple: Team FreeK (and other groups) have been in direct contact with me for a while and have provided me proof beyond reasonable doubt that their tool is real and works as advertised. The Chinese hacker, however, has never been in contact with me so I have no way to verify the extent of their work, besides what’s made publicly available so far. If that person is willing to provide me with proof of their work (not warez releases, but an explanation, in English, of how the dumping process is happening, and what securities they have to overcome in the OS), they can reach me on twitter, in a PM on /talk, or by email. I know it sucks that I don’t read Chinese, but that’s how it is right now. Also, for people who want to complain about the supremacy of English and the USA, I’m not American and English is not my mother language either. I had to learn it at school. You should too, it’s an important language. (So is Mandarin, don’t get me wrong)