Behold, my friends, the most expensive game of cat and mouse in the industry: on Monday, November 2, Sony released yet another PS5 system update, version 26.07-14.22.00, weighing 1.267 GB, and the official note says only: “We’ve made some security fixes to the system software.” It arrived 11 days after 14.20, released on October 21, as the homebrew community races to crack the console before GTA 6 launches on November 19. In the other corner, Switch 2 got a new offline homebrew entry point on Sunday, November 1: CivSwitch.
What happened on PS5
According to IGN, the PlayStation homebrew scene made headlines over the past month with jailbreaks for older firmware: in late September, a jailbreak covering consoles on firmware 7.00 to 13.60 reached any PS5, PS5 Pro included, that had not been updated in the previous week. But some games then required firmware 14.00 to download updates, and the race started over. A prominent member of the community showed evidence of a jailbreak for 14.10, though follow-up comments suggested dumping game executables was not possible.
The industry fear, as IGN puts it, is that a jailbreak for the firmware GTA 6 requires could open the door to piracy of the game on PS5. Some in the community believe the game will require at least 14.20, or now 14.22. Sony is answering on two fronts: frequent updates that close holes, and bug bounties; IGN reported on a hacker who privately reported an exploit to Sony and received $50,000, which caused an uproar in the scene. The patch note is on Sony’s official PS5 system software page.
The race got another chapter on Wednesday, November 4: according to Notebookcheck, Prolapse, a kernel exploit presented in late October as a promising jailbreak for firmware 14.00 and 14.10, has hit a dead end. Its author, Jose Coixao, said on social media that in testing on PS5 hardware the flaw did not cause the expected memory corruption, and that he doubts it can beat the protections of those versions. Even if it had worked, Sony had already closed the hole in 14.20, and 14.22 added more fixes. According to the site, PSN requires at least 14.10 to sign in, and GTA 6 is reported to need 14.22 on launch day: anyone keeping the console up to date, with the store, online play and GTA 6, remains out of reach of these jailbreaks.
What happened on Switch 2
GBAtemp reported that developer Gezine released CivSwitch, which uses a flaw in the Switch 1 edition of Civilization VII on a physical cartridge, version 1.0.0 only, to open the console to homebrew without an internet connection. It arrives ten days after the first public Switch 2 jailbreak. GBAtemp itself notes that when exploits depend on physical games, copies tend to vanish from shelves and rise in price. In the sources we checked, neither Nintendo nor 2K had commented on CivSwitch; historically, Nintendo responds with system updates, online bans and lawsuits (in 2024 it reached a $2.4 million settlement with the makers of a Switch emulator).
The risks, in practice
In practice, tampering with a console is costly: account and console bans from PSN or Nintendo’s network, a voided warranty, the risk of bricking the console and being stuck on old firmware with no game updates or online play. Fake files carrying malware circulate under these projects’ names, and downloading unlicensed games is piracy, which is illegal. SavePoint reports that this exists, but does not point to where to download it or how to do it.
How to play legally
GTA 6 launches on November 19 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, on disc and on the official stores. Civilization VII is sold on Switch, Switch 2 and other platforms through the official stores. And preservation fans have plenty of legal options in our guide to games ported to the browser and PC, with projects that do not distribute commercial games. The world is not ready for this much engineering… and I love it, as long as it stays on the right side of the law.
Where to buy: GTA 6 for PS5 on Amazon
Sources: IGN, GBAtemp, Notebookcheck, Mezha and Sony Interactive Entertainment.
