Hacking progress on the Xbox One is fairly slow, so any news that some groups are working around the encryption is interesting to take.

Xbox One Savegame modding tool: Vantage

Today, a tool named Vantage was released. The utility allegedly lets players modify their Xbox One savegames to cheat in single player games. It claims to be the first game modding tool for Xbox One, although people have been fast to mention that such utilities have most likely existed for a while (but none of these were publicly released)

The information (and download links) came from popular tech and gaming site TheTechGame, along with a video showcasing the tool working in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered. In the Video below, the player is seen jumping at insane heights across all the map in CoD. Screenshots from the tool show that the Xbox One Call of Duty mod allows to enable god mode, run faster, Jump higher than buildings, and have unlimited sprints.

Screenshot from TheTechGame

People are reporting success using the Vantage tool, but we at wololo.net have not tested this (yup, I still don’t have an XBO). Feel free to test and report if you’re an Xbox One owner.

I firmly believe there’s little to no risk of retaliation from Microsoft by using this tool today, as for now this is strictly restrained to single player campaigns.

Xbox One game encryption broken, or just a workaround?

What’s interesting to us here of course is less the possibility to mod games, and more the fact that this means team Vantage has somehow been able to work around the Xbox One’s encryption. With that being said, there exist severe limitations to the tool as of now (in particular the need to reapply the mods at every level), which tend to indicate this is probably more of a workaround rather than the encryption mechanism being actually cracked.

Specifically, from the moderators at TheTechGame:

As for a quick step-by-step:
1. Download the tool and open it
2. Sign in with the Xbox profile you wish to mod the campaign of
3. Select the save from the list that is generated on the top right
4. Wait for the save to download
5. Change the settings to how you want
6. Click save
7. Done

Notes:
1. The game and game data itself needs to be installed on your console, it can not be on an external device
2. You can not have the game running whilst you are using the tool to set the mods (You can be signed in on your profile on Xbox)
3. If you are prompted with which game save to use when loading the game up on console, select “Cloud”
4. The mods only stick for the duration of the level you are currently on. When you complete a level, you will need to wait until you load in to the next one and reach an objective, save your progress and exit the game and then reapply the mods

The team behind the tool promised they will be releasing more editing tools for the Xbox One, and will be working on mods for more specific games. I’m personally surprised that the tool does not allow users to create their own mods at this point, which is typically what such utilities often allow. The counterpart of this is that the interface looks super simple to use and clean.

Download Vantage Game Modding tool for XBox One

Vantage can be downloaded from the source article here.

Source: TheTechGame, thanks to Jon for the tip!