How do 'they' choose which EBOOT's to patch?

[Staylecrate]

Let me start by saying I love you developers out there. You spend a lot of your time working out there for little or no money at all and people still have the nerve to complain when things are not being released or whats being released isn't to their liking. With that said, I am not complaining at all here. I just had a few questions that hopefully someone could give me some insight on.

I was just finishing reading True Blues Release about the new dongle and new releases that will be coming out around its release and wanted to know how PARADOX, BORG or EHRGEIZ (basically the dev teams name you see next to an EBOOT patch release) choose which games to patch.
Is it a matter of popularity or convenience. If it's popularity, who chooses what is popular? I can understand convenience.
This question might have already been brought up but I couldn't find an explanation, just some guesses and conjecture.

I am by no means at the developer level so forgive me if I use the incorrect jargon or terms.
I know some games are released with keys or what have you to newer firmware making it a bit difficult to crack, but some games that are GOTY material, and I would think they would want to profit from by not letting it slip out into the community where it could be copied or what have you. I can only hazard a guess that games of those caliber are in development for a long time and have been written with a code at the time gets cracked by the time it comes out. I may be totally off base.

I just remember when the JB2 came out and was advertising things like play any game FW 3.55+ and True Blue came out and advertised 3.60+, then Portal 2, one of the first 3.60 games to come out and one of the last to get patched, respective to its launch date. Again, not complaining, just wondering why that happened. The some goes for other games. I have seen a lot of 3.70+ EBOOT releases but some really cool games have been left in the lurch.

I know it's a constant cat and mouse game with the Developers and Sony, but if almost all games with the 3.60/3.70 fw or what have you have been patched, why are there some games that are left out?

Sincerely,
Ryan

Please no bashing or flaming. I know people tend to be a bit more mature in the forums. I am just saying.

[ccfman2004]

They mostly go by what's easiest to patch. Some have speculated that they are using debug EBOOTs which would mean that they can only release games that they can get the Debug EBOOTs.

Some games have extra protections to prevent them from being run as a backup. Look at games that were released well before 3.60. There are quite a few that still cannot be run as backups or require special setup to get the game to run.

Also don't forget that they add their own DRM to the EBOOTs so it can only work with their dongle. That adds in the time it takes to patch and release.

Also some games are hard coded not to run in any firmware lower than what's on the game disc. For example a game might require a feature that is only found in later firmwares. As an example, any game the requires MOVE will not work on any firmware lower than 3.40. It may play but without the MOVE drivers you can't do much.

Also some games have more than file that is encrypted with the key. Some games have module files that are also encrypted and need to be patched.

Its obvious that they don't have the key needed to decrypt the EBOOTs or we would see almost EVERY game released instead of only a few. No one knows exactly what their method is and no one seems to want to tell the public for fear that Sony will patch it.

This will always be a cat and mouse game.

The sad part is that a lot of the devs left due to being afraid of being sued by Sony. The old saying seems to apply. "He who has the gold makes the rules."

[Staylecrate]

They mostly go by what's easiest to patch. Some have speculated that they are using debug EBOOTs which would mean that they can only release games that they can get the Debug EBOOTs.
Some games have extra protections to prevent them from being run as a backup. Look at games that were released well before 3.60. There are quite a few that still cannot be run as backups or require special setup to get the game to run.
Its obvious that they don't have the key needed to decrypt the EBOOTs or we would see almost EVERY game released instead of only a few. No one knows exactly what their method is and no one seems to want to tell the public for fear that Sony will patch it.
This will always be a cat and mouse game.
The sad part is that a lot of the devs left due to being afraid of being sued by Sony. The old saying seems to apply. "He who has the gold makes the rules."

Thank you for your reply and insight. I had a feeling it was like that but didn't really know how to articulate all of it in the post. So thanks again for the info and validating some of my suspicions.

Do you think with all of the leaks and software reverse engineering we are seeing there will be a 4.XX CFW? I honestly thought we would be waiting another year or two for a genuine new CFW with new features and PSN access for maybe about a week or so. I was happy when the SEN enabler came out and we could make a pkg for your particular FW. It gave us a chance to synch our trophy's. Unfortunately I did a Backup/Restore and lost about 1,500 trophy's = (

I did have one more question that I am going to make a post for:

Are we going to see a Rebug 3.55.2 that is compatible with 2.7 or do you think they are waiting for the new TB's to come out. If the latter is the case, how did they know about the new Dongles? It's been since TB's v2.4 (I think) since Rebug 3.55.2 stopped working.

I never really used the Rebug Firmware all that much. What is the main different between it and a CFW like Kmeaw beside the general answer: "It's used for debugging and using OtherOS and stuff":

I am looking for the different features available with it, the differences between other CFW's, and what if any the benefits are with using it,

Thanks guys.

[ccfman2004]

The reason that Rebug 3.55.2 does't work with TrueBlue anymore is because the dongle employs security code to prevent you from using it on any CFW other than TrueBlue's CFW. Supposedly the dongle will brick itself if used on a CFW with peek/poke enabled.

I know that someone did manage to get the install package option showing in 4.11 but you could only install retail PKGs and homebrew didn't work. I won't say we'll never see a newer CFW, but I don't think it will happen anytime soon. It took over 1 year before we had temporary PSN access again.

I never used Rebug either as I am quite happy with Kmeaw. I mostly play backups so I don't need for anything else.