I read what veb said as there were two different groups.

"Pirates" who were unable to crack it. "Homebrewers" who didn't want to (because it previously run Linux so they could do homebrew without cracking it).

Sony remove the Linux ability, so the second group ("Homebrewers"), now had motivation to crack it, and succeeded.

If anything I think veb's comment was complementary of homebrewers. He is saying they succeeded where the pirates failed.