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Sony is suing a California man for allegedly selling hacked PlayStation 4 consoles that can run pirated games.

The company's lawsuit, first spotted by TorrentFreak, claims that Eric David Scales is a game pirate who's been offering the jailbroken PS4 consoles on eBay under the handle "Blackcloak13." Sony investigated the sales, and alleges that Scales modified the game systems to beat the company's anti-piracy measures.

Jailbroken PS4 EBay

To investigate, Sony bought two of the jailbroken consoles on eBay, both of which were pre-loaded with more than 60 pirated PS4 game titles as advertised, the lawsuit said. Bundled with one of the consoles was instructions on how to run the "exploit" software code to break the Sony's anti-piracy protections and directions on how to download more pirated games.

Sony's lawsuit didn't go into technical details about the exploit code, but the company claims it allowed the jailbroken console to play any games copied over to the PS4's hard drive.

How did Sony link Blackcloak13 to Scales? When Sony received the jailbroken packages, they had a return address bearing the name Eric Sales of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.

Blackcloak13 also wasn't quiet about his activities. The game pirate had his own website promoting the hacked PS4 consoles. On the website, Blackcloak13 claims that he's been a modding since 2006. "I do this for the gamers," the hacker writes. "Why keep giving money to these big companys [sic] for games. They only take from you and give nothing back."


Sony is demanding Scales pay damages for the copyright and intellectual property rights' infringement. Scales could not be immediately reached for comment.

This is not the first time Sony has sued someone for hacking a PlayStation console. In 2011, the company took American hacker George Hotz to court for releasing code to modify a PS3 to dual boot another operating system. In fighting the legal battle, Sony argued it was protecting its intellectual property. The two parties later agreed to a settlement.