Yesterdays news that the PSP/PS3 Hacker known as Dark ALex has quit the scene sent shivers through our community, part of the problem with being a celebrity in any Scene is that if companys or the police want to trace you they certainly will.
Sony in the past have gone after the makers of VGS a Playstation Emulator for Windows which as you can imagine hurt their buisness. They also went after the coders of Bleem an excellent Playstation emulator not only for windows but also for the Dreamcast, infact on the Dreamcast it was released as Single Game discs that actually improved upon the original game by showing the graphics in a higher resolution than the PS1 outputted.
For Sony to take so long to come after makers of ISO Loaders and Custom Firmwares means they are either getting slow or had too much on their hands with the launches of the PSP and then the PS3 and also court cases with import shops in the UK and the famous battle with Lik Sang.
For those who remember Sony went after the PSP Wiki in Japan because of the Devhook releases and since then the Japanese PSP Homebrew scene has died a death with hardly any news coming from them.
Now getting back to Dark Alex, remember that he is widely known as an Icon in the PSP and also the PS3 Scenes and Sony already sent out a warning to punish any hackers of the PS3. It doesnt take much to realise that he most likely got a cease and desist especially with the news of Sony having a Built In ISO Loader in its newly released firmware.
Will this stop Custom Firmwares, well i would say a big no i dont even think it will stop other hackers who worked with Dark Alex who arent in the public eye from taking the project further and theres also Freeplay and Becus25 also working on Custom Firmwares.
Too many hackers are working on both PSP and PS3 Hacking to halt it now and you can bet they will release hacks anonymously if needed.
So a big thanks from DCEmu to Dark Alex and we wait patiently for the next coder to take up the mantle