PS5 Users Can Earn $17K If They Can Bypass PS5 Hypervisor

You Can Earn Yourself $17,000 If You Can Just Bypass The PS5’s Hypervisor Published Jul 17, 2026, 4:06 AM EDT Sam Woods is TheGamer’s Senior Reporter. He’s been in games journalism since 2020 and has undertaken a variety of roles in that time. These have included roles such as SEO Editor, Managing Editor at DualShockers, and Global Head of Gaming, and he's also been seen on the BBC. He was promoted to the Senior Reporter position in 2025 following a series of high-quality reports and exclusives for TheGamer. Since 2020, Sam has written over 2,500 articles and specializes in telling the stories of the people behind the games. He’s interviewed the biggest game directors, some of the industry’s top talents, told the stories of how indie games came to be, and spoken to players about what really makes them tick. He’s also interviewed some of the world’s biggest musical artists to find out how the medium has inspired their work, and TV and Film actors about their roles in video game adaptations. He even hosted a PAX panel in 2021 and made a documentary in 2024 surrounding the creation of a Disney game. Alongside this, Sam focuses on breaking news. He got the scoop on Perfect Dark’s cancellation, got context around some AI drama, and revealed how Lady Dimitrescu’s actress would love to step back into the character’s giant shoes. These articles have been picked up by the biggest gaming sites, including IGN, GameSpot, and PC Gamer. He also loves to dive into the numbers behind the games. Sam’s journey in games journalism has taken him all over the world. He’s covered Gamescom in Germany, Summer Game Fest in Los Angeles, and Tokyo Game Show in Japan, each on more than one occasion. He’s been learning Japanese since 2024 with the intention of identifying and translating Japanese-language news and bringing it to English-language audiences first, something he’s done countless times. Sam’s first review was 2020’s Battletoads reboot, and he’s since reviewed games in The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, and Pokemon franchises. With Sony's controversial, highly anti-consumer announcement that it would cease production of physical games in 2028, efforts to hack the PS5 have ramped up. Just a few days ago, it was announced SharpEmu was working on a PlayStation 5 emulator, and not long after, Game of the Year winner Astro Bot was seen being booted on the software. Now, aiming to take things a step further, YouTuber Louis Rossmann is offering a bounty, which currently sits at over $16,000, for anybody who can bypass the PS5's hypervisor, allowing for an alternate operating system to be booted on the console. A YouTuber Is Offering A Huge Bounty For Anybody Who Can Get A New OS To Run On PS5 Louis Rossmann is a big advocate for consumer rights and digital ownership. His YouTube channel has over 6.5 million subscribers, and he runs the non-profit FULU, an organization that funds "transparent, verifiable work that restores digital ownership and user control." In a new video on his YouTube channel, Rossmann said: "We're releasing a bounty program where if somebody comes up with a solution that allows you to modify or bypass the PS5 hypervisor to the extent that an alternative operating system can be booted with a one-off implementation that works on firmware 13.42 42 or newer that allows you to access the PS5's primary computation, memory, and graphics. And that allows you to continue to be able to be booted into the original operating system to be able to play PS5 games, we will pay you $10,000." The $10,000 is the amount FULU will contribute to the bounty; however, others eager to make this dream a reality can also chip in. And they have been, with the total bounty pot hitting more than $16,600 at the time of writing. It won't be easy, though. The hypervisor is the highest security layer on the PS5 and prevents unauthorized code from accessing both the CPU and GPU, which are required to boot a new OS. Should somebody be successful, this would open a range of new options on the PS5. Running Linux, for example, would allow native Steam and PC gaming on the PS5. It means potentially getting the best version of a game available on the console. It would also enable emulation, which I believe is the key reason for this bounty. It remains to be seen how long this challenge will take, but if it's anything like the Xbox One, it could take a while. Earlier this year, for the first time in the 13 years since its release, the Xbox console was hacked. It was once dubbed the "most secure product Microsoft has ever produced", so hacking it proved a major problem, but someone got there in the end. Here's hoping it's not as long this time around. Brand Sony Original Release Date November 12, 2020 Original MSRP (USD) $499, €499, £449, ¥49,980 (Base) // $399, €399, £359, ¥39,980 (Digital), Operating System Orbis OS Processor Custom 8-core AMD Zen 2 Resolution 720p - 8K