News
[PSUs]| Wednesday 22nd December 2004 |
Sony unearths Playstation modding scam in Chinese jail
9:48AM, Wednesday 22nd December 2004
Sony Computer Entertainment has traced large numbers of modded Playstations back to a Chinese prison. The company says that containerloads of PS2s were being sent to Shenzhen prison for several days at a time where the inmates altered the machines by adding a extra chip to allow them to play pirated games.
Following a five year investigation, Sony found that the productive prisoners were part of a criminal network turning around up to 50,000 modded PS2s a week. The company said that it discovered that 10 distributors were involved in the operation to sell on the machines.
The companies behind the modding operations have had their own factories raided many times and now seem to be subcontracting the work elsewhere.
Sony has now submitted its evidence to the Chinese authorities to sue two companies and three executives for copyright and trademark infringement
The PS2 was officially launched in China in January this year partly to combat the spread of chipped grey imports.
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