A consumer ownership advocacy organization called Fulu announced in July 2026 a $10,000 bounty for anyone who can disable Sony’s proprietary software locks on the PlayStation 5, potentially allowing users to install alternative operating systems like Linux on the gaming console.
Fulu, led by YouTuber Louis Rossmann and consumer advocate Kevin O’Reilly, funds bounties for the first person to prove they can fix or bypass product features the group considers hostile to device owners. Fulu contributes an initial $10,000 and will match additional donations up to another $10,000. Since launching in late 2025, the organization has paid out two previous bounties — one for a fix to Google’s Nest thermostats and another involving DRM-enabled Molekule air purifiers.
The PS5 bounty comes shortly after Sony announced in early July 2026 that it would end physical disc production for all new PS5 games. That decision drew criticism from gamers and advocacy groups who raised concerns about PlayStation’s terms of service, which state that purchasing a digital game does not constitute ownership. “A lot of PlayStation owners are concerned about what’s going to happen to their consoles,” O’Reilly told WIRED. “They fear that they can get rug-pulled at any moment.”
Fulu also cited the ongoing RAM shortage, which has raised costs across consumer technology, as a reason to find new uses for hardware people already own. “Gaming consoles have significant amounts of computing power,” O’Reilly said. “Why can’t I repurpose that?”
Winning the bounty carries legal risk. Bypassing digital software locks may violate Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1998 law that prohibits circumventing digital protections and carries penalties including fines and jail time. To account for this, Fulu does not require bounty winners to publicly release their methods.
O’Reilly said the effort is intended primarily to spark a broader conversation about device ownership. “Our ownership rights are under attack constantly,” he said. “Computers are computers and we should be able to use them how we want.”
Source: WIRED