$10K Bounty Aims to Make Sony’s PlayStation 5 a Computer Again

Consumer rights organization Fulu has announced a new bounty: $10,000 to the first person who can demonstrate disabling Sony's proprietary software restrictions on the PlayStation 5, allowing installation of alternative operating systems like Linux.

Founded in late 2025 by YouTuber Louis Rossmann and consumer advocate Kevin O'Reilly, Fulu pays bounties for fixes that restore or bypass features deemed hostile to device owners. So far, it has paid two bounties: one for repairing obsolete Google Nest thermostats and another for unlocking DRM-protected Molekule air purifiers.

"Make PlayStations computers again," O'Reilly says. "Let's go back to general-purpose computing and understand that if we own the hardware, we should be able to put the software we want onto it."

In early July, Sony announced it would stop producing physical discs for new PS5 games, sparking criticism from gamers and advocacy groups who worry about digital ownership. "A lot of PlayStation owners are concerned about what's going to happen to their consoles," O'Reilly adds. "They fear that they can get rug-pulled at any moment."

Fulu argues that gaming consoles have significant computing power that could be repurposed for tasks like AI development. However, bypassing Sony's locks may violate Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which prohibits circumventing digital locks and carries fines and imprisonment.

Winners are not required to release their fix publicly, so even a successful jailbreak might not be widely available. Fulu emphasizes that the bounty aims to spark discussion about device ownership. "Our ownership rights are under attack constantly," O'Reilly says. "It's time that we had the conversation and came back to the idea that computers are computers and we should be able to use them how we want."