Back in 2021, modder Lance MacDonald released a patch for playing Bloodborne on PlayStation 4 Pro at 60FPS in boost mode. Sony didn’t seem to notice or care. Until now. Almost four years later, the console maker and publisher of this game hit MacDonald with a DMCA request to have the patch removed from the internet.
“On February 21st, 2021, I created and released a patch for Bloodborne which makes the game run at 60fps,” he wrote on X on Friday. “Today I received a DMCA takedown notification on behalf of Sony Interactive Entertainment asking that I remove links to the patch I posted on the internet, so I’ve now done so.” He then referred fans to an old YouTube video showcasing the mod in action. That hasn’t been DMCA’d. Yet.
Bloodborne has languished for a decade now with no meaningful official upgrades on PS4 Pro, PS5, or PS5 Pro. It never got a remaster or even a PC port. Fans have waiting patiently for a sequel to the FromSoftware action game, but not even a whiff of one has ever materialized. Ex-PlayStation veteran Shuhei Yoshida recently speculated that Sony is waiting until original director Hidetaka Miyazaki is ready to continue the spin-off series, and the timing has just never worked out.
But then Sony does things like this. Why randomly hit a 60FPS mod that only works on hacked last-gen consoles with a takedown request? Why wait almost four years to do it? Does this suggest Sony might actually have something Bloodborne-related in the works, like a PS5 upgrade that boosts the resolution and framerate on regular modern consoles? Or was Sony somehow just never aware of the project before and only got around to enforcing its copyright just now?
A chance meeting looks both funnier and more ominous now in light of the current circumstances: MacDonald tweeted last year that he had just met Yoshida for the first time. “[I] said to him ‘I make mods for PlayStation games’ and he said ‘oh!’” he wrote. “And I said ‘I made the 60fps mod for bloodborne’ and he laughed so hard. Beautiful to meet him, such a wonderful person.” Did Yoshida narc? Or is this another mystery that will drive Bloodborne fans deeper down their conspiratorial rabbit holes?
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