PSPgo Trophy support cancelled for security reasons

Though the PSPgo was thought to be Sony’s most aggressive advance yet in the ongoing piracy arms race, the platform holder already shown concerns that the handheld is malleable.

PSPgo games will be downloaded directly from the PSN Store, with all master game data being held at Sony’s facilities and transferred digitally to PSPgos. The model – similar to Valve’s Steam system and Microsoft’s piracy-hitting Live service – is widely thought to give Sony more leverage in controlling piracy.

Yet PlayStation Network Operations Director Eric Lempel says that the PSPgo will not be incorporating the PS3’s Trophy system in order to “keep it secure”.

Lempel tells news site Joystiq that there are a number of reasons why the Trophy system won’t be coming to PSPgo, one being that people could “artificially inflate their rankings and amounts of Trophies".

Lempel didn’t exactly use the P word, instead implying that users might have found a way to unfairly manipulate user-data if the Trophy system was introduced.

Each edition of the legacy PSPs have been successfully hacked, with a large quantity of PSP owners using the device illicitly. The PS3, however, is fairly impervious to piracy. The company’s steps to limit damage from future attacks on the PSPgo is the first sign that the new model may eventually be hacked.