Team FreeK’s Vitamin leaked, opening the valves of piracy on the PS Vita
Well, I assumed it wouldn’t be long before tools to enable piracy on the PS Vita were made available, but I surely wasn’t expecting it to happen so soon.
Somebody leaked Team FreeK‘s Vitamin tool, and the number of PS Vita warez releases went up exponentially over the past few hours, with several people confirming this is the real thing.
In the wake of the release, famous hacker TheFloW stated he, Mr Gas, and Major_Tom are behind the tool, which got apparently leaked by one of their testers. If I may give my opinion here, I’ll state that it was a bad move to admit being the people who wrote this tool, as this could bring legal attention to them moving forward.
@theflow0 Major Tom shared with a group of people and one of them leaked it.
— TheFloW (@theflow0) August 29, 2016
One thing that’s clear based on the screenshots that people have been sharing is that the leaked version is not a final version of Vitamin. It’s at least lacking the version number and progress bar that was shown in some of Team FreeK’s youtube videos.
A screenshot from Team FreeK’s youtube video, showing clear differences in the tool.
TheFloW has stated he will not be working on Vitamin anymore given the circumstances of the leak, and will not make a proper release.
People are reporting mitigated success using the tool. Although many people have been releasing VPKs on typical Warez channels, not so many of the releases have been reported working so far. Some people are also having issues dumping some specific games. The tool that got leaked certainly has some limitations, and might not ever get an update after TheFloW’s statement.
Source: sadly, it appears the leak happened on our forums. We have removed links to Vitamin, and we ask people to not share this tool here on wololo.net, given that the goal of Vitamin is clearly to bypass DRM protections and has nothing to do with homebrew. We’ll take appropriate action with people who share links to Vitamin moving forward.
🙁
first
I feel your loss
That’s so sad 🙁
Well, that didnt’ take long. I’m, for one, happy it released, upset that they had to drop production because of the leak.
Piracy has ssstarted , 08,29,16 a day to remember. glad i have my psvita 3.60
its incomplete release and this app has no future anymore bcos of that stupid person who leak this thing
Its internet my friend no one cant stop no one , i already install and play a few games , if Team FreeK’s dont want to continue the project, someone will do. I dont like the leak too , but im realistic.
we have no source code, so no one can continue 🙁
realistic yet ignorant lol
Never forget
We have lost valuable leaders of the scene
So, if I want to back up MY OWN games, I need to be on OFW 3.60 and install HENkaku, right? Can I stay on OFW and just “obtain” these decrypted .apk backups? Will they work on OFW if they’re decrypted?
no
Don’t even bother…the program is VERY iffy b/c it’s not the final version….I can’t even get it to start dumping my own game…..it starts up Vitamin, loads up the manual in a separate app like the video does, then loads up the game….but doesn’t dump…..(PS – I downloaded Vitamin very soon after it got leaked…I had no clue that it wasn’t meant to be leaked, I thought maybe it was the actual release…but after seeing it doesn’t have the version number or progress bar, its obvious this one was an early build and have deleted it from my Vita)
Why do I get a feeling that the release was on purpose,so as to take the heat off the actual release
6th
It’s in a lot of people’s mind “YES, VITAMIN IS OUT” myself is sorta that way too, but, some people know that TheFl0w is a very hardworking hacker and this is some exceptional work, call it a milestone if you want, but this leak just completely ruined Team Freek and TheFl0w is more or less leaving the scene earlier now as seen in his tweets. Thank you TheFl0w for your amazing work and we salute you.
He should pass the project to another trusted devs to continue the legacy if he’s into it but kudos to The FloW and Mr.gas and Major Tom for hard work. I understand why they will leave the scene aside from the leakage. just respect the devs and salute.
Oh my god didnt expect this
HENKAKU is my GOD!!!
Now is the winter of our discontent. I’m very wary of the S*ny banhammer hitting anyone who tries this. Make a secondary account, folks!
Still though: if we could mod our legit games, that’s more than enough for me.
Oh awesome, more drama. This is the kind of shît that gives the scene a bad name and drives good, hardworking, and generous devs away.
i tested it .it is awsome and works fine
thx team freeK
Dumping Persona 4 Golden right now to test things out, and it takes FOREVER. Still, seems to be working perfectly. Thanks Team Freek!
No go on the dump, it threw an error but proceeded to give me a 400MB VPK when the original game was over 3GB. Maybe we’ll get that updated version soon?
That’s strange. I dumped God of War Collections just fine and it’s a 3.3gb file.
it’s because the final version utilizes the ram better,that guy just made theFlow leave the scene,a good dev now gone,at least one who showed us attention,hardworker and hero to the scene
Great news. Trying to hold it in always was a pointless task. Piracy was inevitable after the hack an people should decide for themselves if they want to pirate games or not.
Also, if I’m not mistaken about what this Vitamin does, it will open the way for undubs, fan translations and other fan-made patches and this is great, so I’m not sure if making it harder for people to find and download it is a good idea. But it’s your site and your rules. Thank you for at least honestly writing the news themselves – that’s a very professional and nice thing to do.
My day 1 purchase has finally paid off!
Yeah, 5 years later.
now it is time to share our games guys
:D:D:D:D:D
u fkn a****** lmaoo
by the looks of it major tom was the one who shared vitamin to testers and they leaked it, given that he left the scene 2 days ago I think that major tom was blackmailed by this particular tester that he will publish it and all, so major tom got angry just left
PS: I’m not accusing major tom or team freek of anything I’m just saying that they were victims of this leak and this could lead to legal action I just wish them luck and want to thank them for all the good things they did for the ps vita scene
Wait. Do things like this really happen in the hacker scene? People just dropping everything if it doesn’t go exactly as planned?
Not saying this is particularly bad… just, I don’t know. Strange. I feel like most of game development would be dead by now if everyone would leave their project after a leak. And hackers themselves are constantly releasing to the public content and functions that were not supposed to be released if original developers are to be respected…
That was quite a pointless flow of thoughts, I guess, but I really thought that “Major Tom left because life got in the way” was a way more logical reason for his retirement.
O_O ..ty
If you send out the program to have it tested, why would you get so upset that it was leaked? I would only assume that the reason to send out test builds was to make it better for an eventual public release. If this would have just stayed on a couple of developer’s hard drives then I’m glad it got out.
Does this mean that we are gonna miss out on plugins? or atleast for while?
This was a very bad move,please wololo delete the forum post,all the hard work they did until now developing the tool and someone just let it leak.
Not cool bro
the forum post was deleted, and any1 who posts vitamin here will be dealt with, the article says
? though if all 3 of them are against piracy why make a tool that can do it?
I was gonna make some content for ps4,but I thought we were bros,bro
Seeing that a leak like this can happen,the trust is broken.
The scene should be much organized than this
It’s sad to see that between the people who got the opportunity to become testers for the scene, they still are empoisoned by selfish kids who don’t understand the notion of respect they owe to the people who brings the scene to life.
Thank you TheFloW, Mr Gas, and Major_Tom. Thank you for the hard work you’ve put into this !
I hope you still will manage to properly finish this work somehow, as it will be a handy tool even for people who don’t plan to abuse piracy.
Keep it up !
Not cool bros,not cool
I think the next henkaku update should close off piracy exploits
that would require vita shell 2 be able to tell the difference between a homebrew vpk and a retail, its not on henkakus side i dont think
yeah sure
Really? Do you really think that’s a good idea?
indeed,but since I know it won’t happen,everybody on Wololo should stockpile ps vita 64gb cards,the price will definitely shoot up in the next coming weeks
You heard him don’t update your henkaku
I was kidding it doesn’t work that way,now it just depends if you’ll go down the darkside,but if you do don’t forget to buy the game,developing is really hard,makes a person lose alot of hair
You have to love how these devs insist they are against piracy yet days after they finally exploit it they all release piracy tools and make sure to announce them.
I swear this scene leaks like a sieve. You can’t hand out anything for beta testing to anyone, because they’ll immediately share it with the whole wide world.
Bummer all around. I was really looking forward to hearing from Team FreeK just how the tool worked and why.
So we don’t get a proper release because it was leaked early. This scene is turning into a *** show lately….
Good to know the media is still 3 days behind,maybe we can hide this before they find out and give it like a codename
So a pirate is upset that his means of pirating got pirated? Alright.
*Mind Blown
Yeah,but he isn’t a pirate,he’s a crusader
there’s a big difference
This comment sums up everything.
I tried to dump Dragon’s Crown and then run it. It dumps okay, it installs okay (in VitaShell), but running the game throws an error. Trying to update the game to the latest version also doesn’t work.
Something is wrong with this version of the program, and since the guy doesn’t intend to release the Release Version, I guess we’re all ***.
I’ll bite the bullet and call myself an entitled manchild, but come on, why are you throwing a hissy fit when someone on your team gave the files to a group of people and one of them decided to be a skid and leak it. It’s not even the latest version
Damn, why do we have to have *** even on the other side of the Vita? As in Sony ther were not enough.
Really sad to hear such things happen also on free homebrews. He’s right, what’s the point of going on if peope can’t even wait for it?
To the leaker, you’re the most *** idiot on this planet and hope you get hit by a bus, you’re literally a waste of sperm and space. Good job anyways TheFlow0 you have the right to stop working for this stupid ***
Hope that’s not the reason for the recent loss we had on the vita front
The remaining devs will learn from this,but they will continue on,time for Linux devs
Mr tom knew someone leaked this out, this is why he left
It’s sad. There’s always that one person who ruins things for all of us.
the same feeling of a game developer pirated their games…
just waiting for psp and ps1 emulator 🙁
vitasOutForTeamFreek
Everybody, I have found a hotfix for vitamin backups not installing or not installing correctly.
It would be nice if either I could have direct contact with the authors to have a few things explained to have a better understanding how it works;
or if the some of the code was provided. It’s something that can be replicated.
dam_.
Tomorrow’s headlines:People are in a frenzy to purchase The Vita after a new game called vitamin got released
smoke