Metal Gear Online resurrected by white hat hackers

Metal Gear Online, one of the PS3’s earlier multiplayer success stories, has been brought back to life.

Metal Gear Online launched with MGS4: Guns of the Patriots in 2008, and was shut down in 2012.

The 16 player PvP suite wasn’t hugely popular in terms of numbers - Konami wouldn’t have shut it down if it were - but those who loved it did so with a fierce and abiding passion.

Good news for them, then; The Guardian reports a group of white hat hackers have managed to bring the game back online via private servers.

One of the members of the SaveMGO group will give a presentation detailing the work done at an upcoming conference, but in short, the crew reverse-engineered the game’s code from on-disc files, before applying a similar process to netcode and server code.

This was much more difficult than it would be for a live game, as the team had to guess at everything on the server end. The group had to crack network protocol encryption in order to achieve the feat, which is believed to be the first of its kind for PS3.

Unfortunately, you can’t just jump into a match; you’ll need a modified PS3, which is not a great idea. SaveMGO is hoping to develop a work around allowing users to join the fun without needing to open their consoles and fiddle with the innards.

Konami is yet to respond to the news. It has a patchy track record of working with fan groups, and this one has a lot of legal implications, so don't get your hopes up too much.