PS Vita Hacker Major_Tom (née TomTomDu80) showcased a mod of Playstation All stars Battle Royale (video below). The mod replaces the game’s intro video with… well the title of this article probably gives it away.

Besides the rickrolling, MajorTom stated he can now decrypt games on the Playstation Vita.

I can already hear the piracy and the anti-piracy crowds raging in the comments, but it doesn’t seem that what MajorTom’s discovered would enable piracy at this point. He later said on twitter that although he can decrypt and mod the game’s resource files, the binary itself is still encrypted.

 @d227642870 it should not, DRM are not bypassed that way, you still have to own the game to mod it — Major_Tom (@MajorTomVita) August 1, 2016

What this means is that Vita game piracy will most likely not be enabled with this work, although some might say this is the first step towards “backups” loading on the PS Vita.

Game modding, however, is definitely a possibility with Major_Tom’s work. Besides the silly rickroll intro videos, many things could now becoming possible. Unofficial translations of Japanese games, a popular sport in the modding community, might become a possibility. But that’s assuming all the localized assets (including strings) are located in resource files rather than in the (encrypted) binary itself, which in my experience is quite unlikely.

Gameplay modifications also look like they’ll be possible, depending on how the game resources are setup. Major_Tom shared a screenshot showing potential mods for Minecraft.

 haxing much minecraft cheat on vita for free pic.twitter.com/p0Y7hpQgus — Major_Tom (@MajorTomVita) August 1, 2016

Texture modifications and other fun stuff however seem like they’re coming our way for the PS Vita. Major_Tom hasn’t given a release date, but knowing him I’m sure he’ll share more info very soon.

Lots of similar security breakthroughs and announces have been happening on the PS Vita over the past few days, after the release of HENkaku, a Vita native exploit running on the latest firmware 3.60.

