An old Star Wars racing game is selling for over £500 on eBay because it can apparently enable homebrew software on PS5.
Ever since game consoles were first invented, people have been trying to hack them to add modifications or to avoid paying for games legally.
This was prominent in the early PlayStation days, with Sony’s original 1994 console and its successor, the PlayStation 2, being particularly susceptible to hacks and modified chips which allowed people to run pirated copies of games.
While it’s less common today thanks to the prevalence of online games and tighter security measures by publishers,the act of ‘jailbreaking’ a console to run homebrew software still exists with the current generation – and hackers have made a breakthrough on the PlayStation 5 thanks to an old Star Wars game.
A new exploit for the PlayStation 5’s 12.0 firmware update has been discovered via the 2002 PlayStation 2 game, Star Wars Racer Revenge.
This exploit, however, only apparently works with physical copies of the recent PlayStation 4 version, which was released via Limited Run in (as you’d expect) limited quantities, with only 8,500 copies produced in total.
You can’t buy copies from Limited Run anymore, but the standard version was originally sold for $14.99 (£11). Now though, you can find the physical PlayStation 4 version selling for upwards of £300, and in one case £500, on second-hand market sites like eBay.
As much as we’re nostalgic for Star Wars Racer Revenge, it’s certainly not worth that price – even if you are looking to jailbreak the console.
This isn’t the first time a niche game has opened up possibilities in the hacking world. Back in 2014, Nintendo pulled the 3DS game, Cubic Ninja, from the Japanese eShop after it enabled pirated software on the system.
It remains to be seen if Sony will respond in a similar fashion, but considering this is restricted to physical copies of a pretty niche game, it’s a somewhat limited exploit which might be hard to counter.
Star Wars Racer Revenge is a sequel to 1999’s Star Wars Episode 1: Racer, which adapts podracing into video game form. A spiritual successor, Star Wars: Galactic Racer, was revealed last month at The Game Awards.
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