PS4 Piracy Now Exists – If Gamers Want to Jump Through Hoops

During the reign of the first few generations of consoles, gamers became accustomed to their machines being compromised by hacking groups and enthusiasts, to enable the execution of third-party software.

Often carried out under the banner of running “homebrew” code, so-called jailbroken consoles also brought with them the prospect of running pirate copies of officially produced games. Once the floodgates were opened, not much could hold things back.

With the advent of mass online gaming, however, things became more complex. Regular firmware updates mean that security holes could be fixed remotely whenever a user went online, rendering the jailbreaking process a cat-and-mouse game with continually moving targets.

This, coupled with massively improved overall security, has meant that the current generation of consoles has remained largely piracy free, at least on a do-it-at-home basis. Now, however, that position is set to change after the first decrypted PS4 game dumps began to hit the web this week.

Thanks to release group KOTF (Knights of the Fallen), Grand Theft Auto V, Far Cry 4, and Assassins Creed IV are all available for download from the usual places. As expected they are pretty meaty downloads, with GTAV weighing in via 90 x 500MB files, Far Cry4 via 54 of the same size, and ACIV sporting 84 x 250MB.

Partial NFO file for PS4 GTA V

While undoubtedly large, it’s not the filesize that will prove most prohibitive when it comes to getting these beasts to run on a PlayStation 4. Indeed, a potential pirate will need to jump through a number of hoops to enjoy any of these titles or others that may appear in the near future.

KOTF explains as much in the NFO (information) files it includes with its releases. The list of requirements is long.

First up, a gamer needs to possess a PS4 with an extremely old firmware version – v1.76 – which was released way back in August 2014. The fact this firmware is required doesn’t come as a surprise since it was successfully jailbroken back in December 2015.

The age of the firmware raises several issues, not least where people can obtain a PS4 that’s so old it still has this firmware intact. Also, newer games require later firmware, so most games released during the past two to three years won’t be compatible with v1.76. That limits the pool of games considerably.

Finally, forget going online with such an old software version. Sony will be all over it like a cheap suit, plotting to do something unpleasant to that cheeky antique code, given half a chance. And, for anyone wondering, downgrading a higher firmware version to v1.76 isn’t possible – yet.

But for gamers who want a little bit of recent PS4 nostalgia on the cheap, ‘all’ they have to do is gather the necessary tools together and follow the instructions below.

Easy – when you know how

While this is a landmark moment for PS4 piracy (which to date has mainly centered around much hocus pocus), the limitations listed above mean that it isn’t going to hit the mainstream just yet.

That being said, all things are possible when given the right people, determination, and enough time. Whether that will be anytime soon is anyone’s guess but there are rumors that firmware v4.55 has already been exploited, so you never know.

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20th Century Fox is Looking for Anti-Piracy Interns

Piracy remains one of the key threats for most Hollywood movie studios.

Most companies have entire departments dedicated to spotting infringing content, understanding the changing landscape, and figuring out how to respond.

20th Century Fox, for example, has its own Content Protection group, headed by Ron Wheeler. The group keeps an eye on emerging piracy threats and is currently looking for fresh blood.

The company has listed two new internships. The first is for a Graduate JD Law Student, who will be tasked with analyzing fair use cases and finding new targets for lawsuits, among other things.

“Interns will participate in the monitoring of and enforcement against such piracy, including conducting detailed copyright infringement and fair use analyses; identifying and researching litigation targets, and searching the internet for infringing copies of Fox content.”

Fox notes that basic knowledge of the principles of Copyright Law is a plus, but apparently not required. Students who take this internship will learn how film and television piracy affects the media industry and consumers, preparing them for future work in this field.

“This is a great opportunity for students interested in pursuing practice in the fields of Intellectual Property, Entertainment, or Media Law,” the job application explains.

A second anti-piracy internship that was posted recently is a search and analytics position. This includes organizing online copyright infringement intelligence and compiling this in analytical piracy reports for Fox executives.

Undergraduate – Research & Analytics

The research job posting shows that Fox keeps an eye on a wide range of piracy avenues including search engines, forums, eBay and pirate sites.

“Anti-Piracy Internet Investigations and Analysis including, but not limited to, internet research, forum site investigation, eBay searches, video forensics analysis review, database entry, general internet searches for Fox video content, review and summarize pirate websites, piracy trend analysis, and more.”

Those who complete the internship will have a thorough understanding of how widespread piracy issues are. It will provide insight into how this affects the movie industry and consumers alike, Fox explains.

While the average torrenter and streaming pirate might not be very eager to work for ‘the other side,’ these internships are ideal positions for students who have aspirations of working in the anti-piracy field. If any TorrentFreak readers plan to apply and get the job, we’ll be eager to hear what you’ve learned in a few months.

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HDClub, Russia’s Leading HD-Only Torrent Site, Returns as EliteHD

With around 170,000 users, HDClub was known for high-quality releases that often leaked to public sites like The Pirate Bay.

Describing itself as “The HighDefinition BitTorrent Community”, HDClub specialized in HD productions including Blu-ray and 3D content, covering movies, TV shows, music videos, and animation.

The site was the largest of its kind in Russia and had been around for a long time. It celebrated its tenth anniversary a few months ago and during this time it amassed over 170,000 members, which is quite significant for a private community.

However, last month the fun was over. As a total surprise to most of the members, HDTorrents’ operators decided to shut down the site. A Russian language announcement now present on its main page explains the reasons for the site’s demise.

“Recently, we received several dozens of complaints from rightsholders weekly, and our community is subjected to attacks and espionage. In parallel, there is a tightening of Internet legislation in Russia, Ukraine and EU countries,” the announcement explained.

This grim outlook was, however, paired with a glimmer of hope. “There are talks on preserving the heritage of the club,” the site teased.

This was not a false promise, it turned out this week. The former foundation of HDClub now forms the basis of a new tracker. EliteHD takes over where HDClub left off with a working copy of the code, torrents and user database.

“Welcome to the closed tracker elitehd.org. We will try to increase the best HD collection and ensure your safety and confidentiality,” EliteHD’s operators posted in a Russian announcement earlier this week.

“The new site received a full copy of the database and the code of the closed HDClub. The user base has been thoroughly cleaned, there will be no free registration,” it adds.

EliteHD’s torrents

“Thoroughly cleaned” means that around 80,000 accounts were removed and the new maximum is currently set at 100,000 registered users. The torrent database is intact though. There are over 26,000 HD torrents in the database totaling more than 500 terabytes of data.

The site’s operators note that members can continue to seed old torrents as well. All they have to do is change the torrent’s announce URL in their client, and uploads should pick up again.

In recent weeks there have been other private trackers which tried to get former HDClub users on board, but it will be hard to compete with a site that has the real database and code.

EliteHD specifically warns people not to fall for fakes and ‘unofficial’ incarnations of its predecessor. “We strongly recommend that you beware of numerous fake projects and “successors,” the site operators stress.

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HTPC News Roundup 2017 Wk 39: Plex News, Best legal Kodi anime addons, and more

Welcome to the htpcBeginner HTPC News Roundup 2017 Wk 39. This week saw a Plex news feature, best legal anime Kodi addons, and more. Read on for the latest in HTPC news and updates! htpcBeginner Recap In case you missed them, here is a recap of all our interesting articles published last week: Plex News […]

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‘Daily Stormer’ Termination Haunts Cloudflare in Online Piracy Case

Last month Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince decided to terminate the account of controversial neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer.

“I woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet,” he announced.

While the decision is understandable from an emotional point of view, it’s quite a statement to make as the CEO of one of the largest Internet infrastructure companies. Not least because it goes directly against what many saw as Cloudflare’s core values.

For years on end, Cloudflare has been asked to remove terrorist propaganda, pirate sites, and other controversial content. Each time, Cloudflare replied that it doesn’t take action without a court order. No exceptions.

In addition, Cloudflare repeatedly stressed that it was impossible for them to remove a website from the Internet, at least not permanently. It would only require a simple DNS reconfiguration to get it back up and running.

While the Daily Stormer case has nothing to do with piracy or copyright infringement, it’s now being brought up as important evidence in an ongoing piracy liability case. Adult entertainment publisher ALS Scan views Prince as a “key witness” in the case and wants to depose Cloudflare’s CEO to find out more about his decision.

“Mr. Prince’s statement to the public that Cloudflare kicked neo-Nazis off the internet stand in sharp contrast to Cloudflare’s testimony in this case, where it claims it is powerless to remove content from the Internet,” ALS Scan writes.

The above is part of a recent submission where both parties argue over whether Prince can be deposed or not. Cloudflare wants to prevent this from happening and claims it’s unnecessary, but the adult publisher disagrees.

“By his own admissions, Mr. Prince’s decision to terminate certain users’ accounts was ‘arbitrary,’ the result of him waking up ‘in a bad mood,’ and a decision he made unilaterally as ‘CEO of a major Internet infrastructure corporation’.

“Mr. Prince has made it clear that he is the one who determines the circumstances under which Cloudflare will terminate a user’s account,” ALS Scan adds.

For its part, Cloudflare says that the CEO’s deposition is not needed. This is backed up by a declaration where Prince emphasizes that he has no unique knowledge on the company’s DMCA and repeat infringer policies, issues that directly relate to the case at hand.

“I have no unique personal knowledge regarding Cloudflare’s DMCA policy and procedure, including its repeat infringer policies, or Cloudflare’s published Terms of Service,” Prince informs the court

Prince’s declaration

The adult publisher, however, harps on the fact that the CEO arbitrarily decided to remove one site from the service, while requiring court orders in other instances. They quote from a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article he wrote and highlight the ‘kick off the internet’ claim, which contradicts earlier statements.

Cloudflare’s lawyers contend that the WSJ article in question was meant to kick off a conversation and shouldn’t be taken literally.

“The WSJ Article was intended as an intellectual exercise to start a conversation regarding censorship and free speech on the internet. The WSJ Article had nothing to do with copyright infringement issues or Cloudflare’s DMCA policy and procedure.

“When Mr. Prince stated in the WSJ Article that ‘[he] helped kick a group of neo-Nazis off the internet last week,’ his comments were intended to illustrate a point – not to be taken literally,” Cloudflare’s legal team adds.

The deposition of Trey Guinn, a technical employee at Cloudflare, confirms that the company doesn’t have the power to cut a site off the Internet. It further suggests that the entire removal of Daily Stormer was in essence a provocation to start a conversation around freedom of speech.

From Guinn’s deposition

Still, since the lawsuit in question revolves around terminating customers, ALS Scan wants to depose Price to find out exactly when clients are terminated, and why he decided to go beyond Couldflare’s usual policy.

“No other employee can testify to Mr. Prince’s decision-making process when it comes to terminating a user’s access. No other employee can offer an explanation as to why The Daily Stormer’s account was terminated while repeat infringers’ accounts are allowed to remain.

“In a case where Mr. Prince’s personal judgment appears to govern even over Cloudflare’s own policies and procedures, Cloudflare cannot meet its heavy burden of demonstrating why he should not be deposed,” ALS Scan’s lawyers add.

To be continued.

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Denuvo Crisis After Total Warhammer 2 Gets Pirated in Hours

Needing little introduction, the anti-piracy system sold by Denuvo Software Solutions of Austria is probably the most well-known product of its type of the planet.

For years, Denuvo was considered pretty much impenetrable, with its presence a virtual stamp of assurance that a game being protected by it would not fall victim to piracy, potentially for years. In recent times, however, things have begun to crumble.

Strangely, it started in early 2016 with bad news. Chinese cracking group 3DM declared that Denuvo was probably uncrackable and no protected games would appear online during the next two years.

By June, however, hope appeared on the horizon, with hints that progress was being made. By August 2016, all doubts were removed when a group called CONSPIR4CY (a reported collaboration between CPY and CODEX) released Rise of the Tomb Raider.

After that, Denuvo-protected titles began dropping like flies, with some getting cracked weeks after their launch. Then things got serious.

Early this year, Resident Evil 7 fell in less than a week. In the summer, RiME fell in a few days, four days exactly for Tekken 7.

Now, however, Denuvo has suffered its biggest failure yet, with strategy game Total War: Warhammer 2 falling to pirates in less than a day, arguably just a few hours. It was cracked by STEAMPUNKS, a group that’s been dumping cracked games on the Internet at quite a rate for the past few months.

TOTAL.WAR.WARHAMMER.2-STEAMPUNKS

“Take this advice, DO NOT CODE a new installer when you have very hot Babes dancing in their bikini just in front of you. Never again,” the group said in a statement. “This time we locked ourselves inside and produced a new installer.”

The fall of this game in such a short space of time will be of major concern to Denuvo Software Solutions. After Resident Evil 7 was cracked in days earlier this year, Denuvo Marketing Director Thomas Goebl told Eurogamer that some protection was better than nothing.

“Given the fact that every unprotected title is cracked on the day of release — as well as every update of games — our solution made a difference for this title,” he said.

With yesterday’s 0-day crack of Total War: Warhammer 2, it can be argued that Denuvo made absolutely no difference whatsoever to the availability of the title. It didn’t even protect the initial launch window.

Goebl’s additional comment in the summer was that “so far only one piracy group has been able to bypass [Denuvo].” Now, just a handful of months later, there are several groups with the ability. That’s not a good look for the company.

Back in 2016, Denuvo co-founder Robert Hernandez told Kotaku that the company does not give refunds. It would be interesting to know if anything has changed there too.

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EU Proposes Take Down Stay Down Approach to Combat Online Piracy

In recent years, many copyright holders have grown frustrated with pirates copies of their content (re)appearing on hundreds of online platforms.

This problem is not restricted to pirate sites, but also affects other services where users can freely upload content, including Dropbox, Google, YouTube, and Facebook.

In an attempt to streamline these takedown procedures the European Commission published a detailed set of guidelines today. Their communication titled “Tackling Illegal Content Online” includes a comprehensive overview of how illegal content, including piracy, should be dealt with.

The recommendation, of which a non-final copy leaked earlier this month, is non-binding. However, future legislative measures are not ruled out if no significant progress is made.

One of the motivations to release the guidelines is to define clearly what a good takedown policy would look like. A harmonized and coherent takedown approach is currently missing in the EU, the Commission notes.

“A more aligned approach would make the fight against illegal content more effective. It would also benefit the development of the Digital Single Market and reduce the cost of compliance with a multitude of rules for online platforms, including for new entrants,” the recommendation reads.

One of the suggestions that stand out is “proactive” filtering. The Commission recommends that online services should implement measures that can automatically detect and remove suspected illegal content.

“Online platforms should do their utmost to proactively detect, identify and remove illegal content online. The Commission strongly encourages online platforms to use voluntary, proactive measures aimed at the detection and removal of illegal content and to step up cooperation and investment in, and use of, automatic detection technologies.”

This is similar to the much-discussed upload filters and raises the question whether such practice is in line with existing EU law. In the Sabam v Netlog case, the European Court of Justice previously ruled that hosting sites can’t be forced to filter copyrighted content, as this would violate the privacy of users and hinder freedom of information.

Importantly, the Commission emphasizes that when online services explicitly search for pirated material, they won’t lose the benefit of the liability exemption provided for in Article 14 of the E-Commerce Directive. In other words, copyright holders can’t hold these services accountable for content that slips through the net.

The recommendation further includes some specific suggestions to make sure that content, once removed, does not reappear. This is the notice-and-stay-down approach copyright holders are lobbying for, which can be addressed by content recognition tools including hash filtering.

“The Commission strongly encourages the further use and development of automatic technologies to prevent the re-appearance of illegal content online,” the document reads, adding that errors should not be overlooked.

“Where automatic tools are used to prevent re-appearance of illegal content a reversibility safeguard should be available for erroneous decisions, and the use and performance of this technology should be made transparent in the platforms’ terms of service.”

Hash-based and other automatic filters are not new of course. Services such as Google Drive and Dropbox already have these in place and YouTube’s Content-ID system also falls into this category.

Another measure to prevent re-uploading of content is to ban frequent offenders. The Commission notes that services should take appropriate measures against such users, which could include the suspension or termination of accounts.

Most of the suggestions come with a recommendation to have sufficient safeguards in place to repair or prevent errors. This includes a counter-notice process as well as regularly published transparency reports. In some cases where context is relevant, it is important to have a human reviewer in the loop.

Finally, the Commission encourages cooperation between online services and so-called “trusted flaggers.” The latter are known representatives of copyright holders who are trusted. As such, their takedown notices can be prioritized.

“Notices from trusted flaggers should be able to be fast-tracked by the platform. This cooperation should provide for mutual information exchange so as to evaluate and improve the removal process over time.”

The proposals go above and beyond current legal requirements. For many larger online services, it might not be too hard to comply with most of the above. But, for smaller services, it could be quite a burden.

European Digital Rights (EDRi) has highlighted some good and bad elements but remains critical.

“The document puts virtually all its focus on internet companies monitoring online communications, in order to remove content that they decide might be illegal. It presents few safeguards for free speech, and little concern for dealing with content that is actually criminal,” EDRi writes.

Google has also been critical of the notice-and-stay-down principle in the past. Copyright counsel Cédric Manara previously outlined several problems, concluding that the system “just won’t work.“

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Football Coach Retweets, Gets Sued for Copyright Infringement

When copyright infringement lawsuits hit the US courts, there’s often a serious case at hand. Whether that’s the sharing of a leaked movie online or indeed the mass infringement that allegedly took place on Megaupload, there’s usually something quite meaty to discuss.

A lawsuit filed this week in a Pennsylvania federal court certainly provides the later, but without managing to be much more than a fairly trivial matter in the first instance.

The case was filed by sports psychologist and author Dr. Keith Bell. It begins by describing Bell as an “internationally recognized performance consultant” who has worked with 500 teams, including the Olympic and national teams for the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Fiji, and the Cayman Islands.

Bell is further described as a successful speaker, athlete and coach; “A four-time
collegiate All-American swimmer, a holder of numerous world and national masters swim records, and has coached several collegiate, high school, and private swim teams to competitive success.”

At the heart of the lawsuit is a book that Bell published in 1982, entitled Winning Isn’t Normal.

“The book has enjoyed substantial acclaim, distribution and publicity. Dr. Bell is the sole author of this work, and continues to own all rights in the work,” the lawsuit (pdf) reads.

Bell claims that on or about November 6, 2015, King’s College head football coach Jeffery Knarr retweeted a tweet that was initially posted from @NSUBaseball32, a Twitter account operated by Northeastern State University’s RiverHawks baseball team. The retweet, as shown in the lawsuit, can be seen below.

The retweet that sparked the lawsuit

“The post was made without authorization from Dr. Bell and without attribution
to Dr. Bell,” the lawsuit reads.

“Neither Defendant King’s College nor Defendant Jeffery Knarr contacted Dr.
Bell to request permission to use Dr. Bell’s copyrighted work. As of November 14, 2015, the post had received 206 ‘Retweets’ and 189 ‘Likes.’ Due to the globally accessible nature of Twitter, the post was accessible by Internet users across the world.”

Bell says he sent a cease and desist letter to NSU in September 2016 and shortly thereafter NSU removed the post, which removed the retweets. However, this meant that Knarr’s retweet had been online for “at least” 10 months and 21 days.

To put the icing on the cake, Bell also holds the trademark to the phrase “Winning Isn’t Normal”, so he’s suing Knarr and his King’s College employer for trademark infringement too.

“The Defendants included Plaintiff’s trademark twice in the Twitter post. The first instance was as the title of the post, with the mark shown in letters which
were emphasized by being capitalized, bold, and underlined,” the lawsuit notes.

“The second instance was at the end of the post, with the mark shown in letters which were emphasized by being capitalized, bold, underlined, and followed by three
exclamation points.”

Describing what appears to be a casual retweet as “willful, intentional and purposeful” infringement carried out “in disregard of and with indifference to Plaintiff’s rights,” Bell demands damages and attorneys fees from Knarr and his employer.

“As a direct and proximate result of said infringement by Defendants, Plaintiff is
entitled to damages in an amount to be proven at trial,” the lawsuit concludes.

Since the page from the book retweeted by Knarr is a small portion of the overall work, there may be a fair use defense. Nevertheless, defending this kind of suit is never cheap, so it’s probably fair to say there will already be a considerable amount of regret among the defendants at ever having set eyes on Bell’s 35-year-old book.

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US Court Orders Dozens of “Pirate” Site Domain Seizures

ABS-CBN, the largest media and entertainment company in the Philippines, has delivered another strike to pirate sites in the United States.

Last week a federal court in Florida signed a default judgment against 43 websites that offered copyright-infringing streams of ABS-CBN owned movies, including Star Cinema titles.

The order was signed exactly one day after the complaint was filed, in what appears to be a streamlined process.

The media company accused the websites of trademark and copyright infringement by making free streams of its content available without permission. It then asked the court for assistance to shut these sites down as soon as possible.

“Defendants’ websites operating under the Subject Domain Names are classic examples of pirate operations, having no regard whatsoever for the rights of ABS-CBN and willfully infringing ABS-CBN’s intellectual property.

“As a result, ABS-CBN requires this Court’s intervention if any meaningful stop is to be put to Defendants’ piracy,” ABS-CBN wrote.

Instead of a lengthy legal process that can take years to complete, ABS-CBN went for an “ex-parte” request for domain seizures, which means that the websites in question are not notified or involved in the process before the order is issued.

After reviewing the proposed injunction, US District Judge Beth Bloom signed off on it. This means that all the associated registrars must hand over the domain names in question.

“The domain name registrars for the Subject Domain Names shall immediately assist in changing the registrar of record for the Subject Domain Names, to a holding account with a registrar of Plaintiffs’ choosing..,” the order (pdf) reads.

In the days that followed, several streaming-site domains were indeed taken over. Movieonline.io, 1movies.tv, 123movieshd.us, 4k-movie.us, icefilms.ws and others are now linking to a notice page with information about the lawsuit instead.

The notice

Gomovies.es, which is also included, has not been transferred yet, but the operator appears to be aware of the lawsuit as the site now redirects to Gomovies.vg. Other domains, such as Onlinefullmovie.me, Putlockerm.live and Newasiantv.io remain online as well.

While the targeted sites together are good for thousands of daily visitors, they’re certainly not the biggest fish.

That said, the most significant thing about the case is not that these domain names have been taken offline. What stands out is the ability of an ex-parte request from a copyright holder to easily take out dozens of sites in one swoop.

Given ABS-CBN’s legal track record, this is likely not the last effort of this kind. The question now is if others will follow suit.

—

The full list of targeted domain is as follows.

1 movieonline.io
2 1movies.tv
3 gomovies.es
4 123movieshd.us
5 4k-movie.us
6 desitvflix.net
7 globalpinoymovies.com
8 icefilms.ws
9 jhonagemini.com
10 lambinganph.info
11 mrkdrama.com
12 newasiantv.me
13 onlinefullmovie.me
14 pariwiki.net
15 pinoychannel.live
16 pinoychannel.mobi
17 pinoyfullmovies.net
18 pinoyhdtorrent.com
19 pinoylibangandito.pw
20 pinoymoviepedia.ch
21 pinoysharetv.com
22 pinoytambayanhd.com
23 pinoyteleseryerewind.info
24 philnewsnetwork.com
25 pinoytvrewind.info
26 pinoytzater.com
27 subenglike.com
28 tambayantv.org
29 teleseryi.com
30 thepinoy1tv.com
31 thepinoychannel.com
32 tvbwiki.com
33 tvnaa.com
34 urpinoytv.com
35 vikiteleserye.com
36 viralsocialnetwork.com
37 watchpinoymoviesonline.com
38 pinoysteleserye.xyz
39 pinoytambayan.world
40 lambingan.lol
41 123movies.film
42 putlockerm.live
43 yonip.zone
43 yonipzone.rocks

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Of Course Atlus Hit RPCS3’s Patreon Page Over Persona 5

For the uninitiated, RPCS3 is an open-source Sony PlayStation 3 emulator for PC. This growing and brilliant piece of code was publicly released in 2012 and since then has been under constant development thanks to a decent-sized team of programmers and other contributors.

While all emulation has its challenges, emulating a relatively recent piece of hardware such as Playstation 3 is a massive undertaking. As a result, RPCS3 needs funding. This it achieves through its Patreon page, which currently receives support from 675 patrons to the tune of $3,000 per month.

There’s little doubt that there are plenty of people out there who want the project to succeed. Yesterday, however, things took a turn for the worse when RPCS3 attracted the negative attention of Atlus, the developer behind the utterly beautiful RPG, Persona 5.

According to the RPCS3 team, Atlus filed a DMCA takedown notice with Patreon requesting the removal of the entire RPCS3 page after the team promoted the fact that Persona 5 would be compatible with the under-development emulator.

“The PS3 emulator itself is not infringing on our copyrights and trademarks; however, no version of the P5 game should be playable on this platform; and [the RPCS3] developers are infringing on our IP by making such games playable,” Atlus told Patreon.

Fortunately for everyone involved, Patreon did not storm in and remove the entire page, not least since the page itself didn’t infringe on Atlus’ IP rights. However, Atlus was not happy with the response and attempted to negotiate with the fund-raising platform, noting that in order for Persona 5 to work, the user would have to circumvent the game’s DRM protections.

The RPCS3 team, on the other hand, believe they’re on solid ground, noting that where their main developers live, it is legal to make personal copies of legally purchased games. They concede it may not be legal for everyone, but in any event, that would be irrelevant to the DMCA notice filed against their Patreon page. Indeed, trying to take down an entire fundraiser with a DMCA notice was a significant overreach under the circumstances

According to a statement from the team, ultimately a decision was taken to proceed with caution. In order to avoid a full takedown of their Patreon page, all mentions of Persona 5 were removed from both the fund-raiser and main RPSC3 site yesterday.

The RPSC3 team noted that they had no idea why Atlus targeted their project but an announcement from the developer later shone a little light on the issue.

“We believe that our fans best experience our titles (like Persona 5) on the actual platforms for which they are developed. We don’t want their first experiences to be framerate drops, or crashes, or other issues that can crop up in emulation that we have not personally overseen,” Atlus explained.

While some gamers expressed negative opinions over Atlus’ undoubtedly overbroad actions yesterday, it’s difficult to argue with the developer’s main point. Emulators can be beautiful things but there is no doubt that in many instances they don’t recreate the gaming experience perfectly. Indeed, in some cases when things don’t go to plan, the results can be pretty horrible.

That being said, for whatever reason Atlus has chosen not to release a PC version of this popular title so, as many hardcore emulator fans will tell you (this one included), that’s a bit of a red rag to a bull. The company suggests that it might remedy that situation in the future though, so maybe that’s some consolation.

In the meantime, there’s a significant backlash against Atlus and what it attempted to do to the RPCS3 project and its fund-raising efforts. Some people are threatening never to buy an Atlus game ever again, for example, and that’s their prerogative.

But really – is anyone truly surprised that Atlus reacted in the way it did?

While Persona 5 isn’t available on PC yet, this isn’t an out-of-print game from 1982 that’s about to disappear into the black hole of time because there’s no hardware to play it on. This is a game created for relatively current hardware (bang up to date if you include the PS4 version) that was released April 2017 in the United States, just a handful of months ago.

As such, none of the usual ‘moral’ motivations for emulating games on other platforms exist for Persona 5 and for that reason alone, the decision to heavily mention it in RPCS3 fund-raising efforts was bound to backfire. It doesn’t matter whether emulation or dumping of ROMs is legal in some regions, any company can be expected to wade in when someone threatens their business model.

The stark reality is that when they do, entire projects can be put at risk. In this case, Patreon stepped in to save the day but it could’ve been a lot worse. Martyring the whole project for one game would’ve been a disaster for the team and the public. All that being said, Atlus is unlikely to come out of this on top.

“Whatever people may wish, there’s no way to stop any playable game from being executed on the emulator,” the RPCS3 team note.

“Blacklisting the game? RPCS3 is open-source, any attempt would easily be reversed. Attempting to take down the project? At the time of this post, this and many other games were already playable to their full extent, and again, RPCS3 is and will always be an open-source project.”

The bottom line here is that Atlus’ actions may have left a bit of a bad taste in the mouths of some gamers, but even the most hardcore emulator fan shouldn’t be surprised the company went for the throat on a game so fresh. That being said, there are lessons to be learned.

Atlus could’ve spoken quietly to RPCS3 first, but chose not to. RPCS3, on the other hand, will probably be a little bit more strategic with future game compatibility announcements, given what’s just happened. In the long term, that will help them, since it will ensure longevity for the project.

RPCS3 is needed, there’s no doubt about that, but its true value will only be felt when the PS3 has been consigned to history. At that point people will understand why it was worth all the effort – and the occasional hiccup.

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