I really don't get the self entitled whining on this post. Y'all have unofficial firmware installed and are complaining as you can't access full services like before when it's sonys right to protect their platform by any means. It's just the way it is. What you had was lucky what you've got is reality.
Maybe I'm new school, but this shit worked before. It's not even trying to access online play -- we're trying NOT to be dirty pirates and actively WANTING to support the company (Which is what this, alongside many other forums that are actively pro-hacks, suggest), but we can't.
The PSP was modded to hell, pirated up the ass, and was left in the dust. And you know what?
The PSP's store works better than the Vita's does.
That'd be like if you bought a Wii or Wii U, or even a 3DS, and you buy a new game in its physical form; you plug it in, and it spits it back out just because you don't have a high-enough firmware. And this shit is gonna stick LONG AFTER Sony pulls the plug on servers if it continues this way. It'll be hell in the future. Even if we get workarounds now, who's going to know that if they just got into the whole "Vita modding thing"?
It's simply a boneheaded move by the company who has continuously hampered their devices with obtuse and aggravating safeguards, just because of their
paranoia of hacks and mods, and we as the consumer need to just grin and bear with simplistic tasks being taken to another extreme.
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With Wii U 5.5.2 update it has - the sole purpose was to patch WebKit kernel exploit and lock 5.5.1 users out of online play.
But that's all it's done, and that's normal. Hell, one day, someone's going to bypass this... somehow. It's not like you're physically incapable of playing video games on a newly bought Wii U just because you have a lower firmware, but on the Vita, it is.
Nintendo's patch doesn't make physical games, or backwards compatibility useless unless you activate the console
explicitly on the latest firmware. Too bad Sony's does.