Sony is fighting what may be a long, ugly legal battle to remove all traces of the PlayStation 3 hacks and cracks available online, and now the company has taken the fight directly to gamers. "Consumers using circumvention devices or running unauthorized or pirated software will have access to the PlayStation Network and access to Qriocity services through PlayStation 3 system terminated permanently," Sony announced today.

"By identifying PlayStation 3 systems that breach our guidelines and terminating their ability to connect to PlayStation Network, we are protecting our business and preserving the honest gameplay experiences that you expect and deserve," Jeff Rubenstein, Sony Computer Entertainment's Social Media Manager, wrote on the company's official blog.

Sony claims that the policy will not affect the vast majority of PlayStation 3 owners, and says that "circumvention devices and game piracy damage our industry and can potentially injure the online experience for you, our loyal PlayStation customers, via hacks and cheats."

So there we are. If you're running custom firmware, or have an open PlayStation 3, you may want to stay offline for a while. It is not currently known if there is some way for users to run hacked firmware and get around these bans, but one thing is certain: someone, or a group of someones, is already working on a solution to this newest wrinkle in Sony's ongoing effort to keep the PlayStation 3 locked down tight.