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What a time to be alive. Gamers are starting to play Steam games locally on jailbroken PlayStation 5 consoles, thanks to several projects that aim to bring PC gaming to the Sony-loving masses. One such project is Playden for PS5, which was made publicly available earlier this month.
The program functions as a Steam launcher, but also creates a private Windows environment via prospero-win, a port of Wine for PlayStation 5 (via Videocardz). The software has support for up to Direct3D 11 through DXVK and Direct3D 12 games through VKD3D-Proton, and includes a separate runtime kit for the graphics drivers, along with specific app shells for the games themselves.
“It downloads a game, prepares it, and hands it to a separate PS5 app made for that game. That app starts Wine with the game’s settings,” says the readme on the project’s GitHub page. “Because each game is its own app, it has its own tile on the PS5 Home screen, and it is isolated: its files, settings and crashes stay inside it.”
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Reddit user Cevap has posted a video of their jailbroken PS5 playing Portal locally. “Game runs as you expect,” says Cevap. “Only issue being you can’t use a mouse cursor, nor can you press ESC to go to the options. Otherwise basic controls work. What an amazing project, thank you!”
In the case of Playden for PS5, the GitHub page stresses that the software is in an early alpha state, so it’s probably best not to expect too much from it at this stage. The compatible games list is pretty chonky, though, including some pretty big hitters. Just be prepared for crashes if you give it a go yourself.
Testing Steam games on Playden! from r/PS5_Jailbreak
It must also be mentioned that, aside from the risks of jailbreaking a PS5 in the first place, users also need to log in to their official Steam accounts to use the software. “Valve does not support third-party clients,” say the devs “We know of no account problems from this, but the risk is yours to accept.”
It’s also quite an involved process to get it working by the looks of things, so this is probably one for advanced users. Still, I guess I can chalk this up as “things I thought I’d never see.” An increasingly long list in 2026, it seems.
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