14 DAY TRIAL // Medal of Honor, EA's latest first person shooter, is the first title to require PlayStation 3 users to upgrade their firmware in order to be able to play the game, effectively rendering jailbroken or hacked PS3s useless.
For those not in the know, the PlayStation 3, after years of withstanding hacking attempts, was finally broken, thanks to multiple exploits like PSGroove or PSFreedom, which rendered the console able to play backups of original games.
As you can imagine, this was easily used by some gamers to pirate new and existing titles, so Sony was forced to take action in order to keep the PS3s untarnished image.
The first step was the launch of the 3.42 firmware, which blocked the USB exploits, and then the 3.50 firmware, which blocked a lot of other USB devices, including third-party controllers.
Now, such a protection has also been included in new PlayStation 3 games, with Medal of Honor being the first one to require the 3.42 firmware in order to be playable.
As such, those with jailbroken or hacked PlayStation 3 consoles can't run a pirated copy of the game.
It is expected for all new PS3 games, developed by Sony or other companies, to have such a protection, effectively killing the whole PS3 piracy problem.
Still, don't think hackers will have this standing down, as there are already some new attempts to adapt the jailbreak exploit to the newer firmwares, so it's only a matter of time before they will figure out how the bypass Sony's security measures.
While this new Sony solution might stop PS3 pirates from playing new titles, the whole back catalog of games is still fully playable, and lots of "backups" are being downloaded around the web, on various dubious websites.
As of right now, the PlayStation 3 is still the only home console of the current generation that has withstood hacking efforts, unlike the Xbox 360 or Nintendo Wii.