A $10K Bounty Aims to Make Sony’s PlayStation 5 a Computer Again

Using your PlayStation to play games is conscionable fine. But what if you could usage your Sony console to vibe codification with your AI agents connected Linux instead? That's what the ownership advocacy enactment Fulu wants to marque possible, and it’s consenting to wage $10,000 to beryllium it tin beryllium done.

Helmed by YouTuber Louis Rossmann and chap user advocator Kevin O'Reilly, Fulu pays bounties to the archetypal idiosyncratic who proves they tin hole oregon bypass merchandise features that Fulu deems to beryllium hostile to instrumentality owners. Fulu puts up the archetypal $10,000, past volition lucifer donations up to different $10K. Since it started successful precocious 2025, Fulu has paid retired 2 bounties truthful far—one for a hole of Google’s outdated Nest thermostats and different for DRM-enabled Molekule aerial purifiers.

On Tuesday, Fulu announced a bounty that would reward hackers who could disable Sony’s proprietary bundle locks connected its PlayStation 5 consoles and, successful theory, let a idiosyncratic to instal an operating strategy similar Linux connected the gaming console.

“Make PlayStations computers again,” O'Reilly tells WIRED. “Let's spell backmost to general-purpose computing and recognize that if we ain the hardware, we should beryllium capable to enactment the bundle we privation onto it.”

In aboriginal July, Sony announced it was ending accumulation of carnal discs for each caller games connected its PS5 consoles. The determination was controversial, inspiring consternation from gamers and advocacy groups, galore of whom thin to similar carnal media and person qualms astir PlayStation’s presumption of service, which specifically authorities that buying a integer transcript of a crippled does not mean you ain it.

“A batch of PlayStation owners are acrophobic astir what's going to hap to their consoles,” O'Reilly says. “They fearfulness that they tin get rug-pulled astatine immoderate moment.”

The ongoing RAM shortage has raised costs crossed each sorts of goods, including user tech similar Sony’s consoles. As prices spell up, Fulu wants to amusement that the mode to upwind that costly tempest is to find a caller mode to trust connected devices you already own.

“Gaming consoles person important amounts of computing power,” O'Reilly says. “Why can't I repurpose that? If I'm trying to vibe codification oregon acceptable up agentic AI systems, wherefore can't I usage this box, this machine that I bought—that I own—to bash what I privation to do?”

Like each of Fulu’s targets, determination is simply a hazard attached. Breaking done a company’s bundle restrictions whitethorn tally afoul of Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, authorities passed successful 1998 that prohibits users from bypassing integer locks connected bundle services. It’s a instrumentality that is punishable by fines and adjacent jailhouse time.

To triumph a Fulu bounty, a idiosyncratic has to beryllium they person a fix, but they are not required to merchandise it to the nationalist if they are disquieted astir perchance facing ineligible consequences. That means adjacent if the PS5 jailbreak is accomplished, it whitethorn not beryllium disposable for radical to usage widely. Fulu says the thought is little astir really making this comparatively niche usage lawsuit for the PS5 possible, and much astir encouraging radical to look otherwise astatine what power they person implicit their devices.

“Our ownership rights are nether onslaught constantly,” O'Reilly says. “It's clip that we had the speech and we came backmost to the thought that computers are computers and we should beryllium capable to usage them however we privation to.”