Iconic PlayStation hacker and homebrew developer Andy ‘TheFlow0’ Nguyen has abandoned the ongoing PS5 Linux project due to the rise of AI vibe-coders in open-source spaces.
Nguyen, who famously created the first kernel exploit for the PlayStation Vita, has spent over a decade creating exploits and homebrew for PlayStation systems. As one of the leaders behind the ongoing PS5 Linux project, which brought modern PC gaming to the console, the developer was also bringing the full Linux OS experience to Sony’s PS5 with miraculous results.
In an update on social media, the modder announced that they would be “stepping away from the PS5 scene” as well as ending their work on PS5 Linux. “After pouring my heart and months of my life into it, including plans to finish PS5 Pro support and release in 2027, it’s all down the sink,” they said.
Nguyen, like many other homebrew developers recently, explained that they are ending the project due to the rise of AI vibe-coders in open-source spaces. Recently, brilliant PlayStation 3 emulator RPCS3 announced a ban on vibe coding participants due to the fact that vibe-coders in open-source spaces are submitting code that they do not actually understand.
In Nguyen’s words, “the scene used to be a group of highly talented researchers, but now it is just a bunch of noobs using LLMs and writing hacks they don’t even understand”. Additionally, it seems that vibe-coders, or “slop kiddies” as the modder dubbed them, used AI to detect a bug that they were using to crack consoles, and reported it to Sony for a bounty.
“Slop kiddies found the only hypervisor bug left, which I had also found a while ago, and decided to report to Sony,” the modder said on social media. “I asked them to at least wait for GTA 6 to come out so that people would have the opportunity to legally purchase the game and also enjoy linux. They agreed to wait, but not a day passed and they decided to waste it instead.”
With this in mind, it seems that the progress on PS5 Linux for consoles on newer OS versions may have been ruined by the reporting of this bug. This means that the last version of PS5 Linux to be helmed by the modder is the currently available Version 2.5 which supports PS5 Phat and Slim console running 3.00-7.61 firmwares.
I’m exhauseted with AI and AI news. It’s why I had to leave Reddit. It has ruined everything that I enjoy.
The post that did it for me was some guy saying “I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing but I had claude port sonic cd to the Saturn”
It’s just endless hyperdrive of slop. Everyone is a “coder” now. It’s sad.
These guys are everywhere. Someone on Vogons recently "ported" Terminator Future Shock from DOS to the Godot Engine.
The project is mostly useless and full of bugs. He also didn't disclose that he used AI at all. I wonder what he expected - praise? This feels similar to the cheaters in speedrunning, they often shower in praise for years until they get caught.
I hope that projects like these finally die down when the big LLM companies go down the drain and they can't run hundreds of agents in a datacentre without actually paying the money anymore.
So this is one of those subject myself and my coworkers talk about all the time now. So many of these younger coders just use LLMs to code shit and it's bleeding into commercial products now.
We talk about when all this shit comes crashing down due to all of these new programmers having no grasp on programming or software architecture and we can charge out the ass like when Y2K came.
yAI bugs, hooray!
I wonder if this is the same as when people got their sticky hands on WYSIWYG editors in the late 90s. Sure they could make some stuff by themselves, but it wasn't really viable. We might just have to get over that hill... That very tall and exhausting hill...