That is bad news, but he's done alot for the whole community and that's what is important.  I'd hate to imagine where the scene would be now without his work on downgraders and custom firmwares.  

If Sony did put some sort of warning in the firmware then I'm sure they would follow through with it.  In Europe what Dark_Alex does is right on the line of being legal or illegal, and Sony would force any sort of lawsuit as far as they could.  They've already had people doing hard-mods on consoles arrested in a few countries there, and probably feel like they will win any lawsuit after shutting down Lik-Sang.  I wouldn't ask anyone to endure that kind of bullchocolate just so my PSP isn't the boring piece of poo poo Sony is determined to make it.

Whatever it was that made him leave the scene, he has done alot for all of us and I (as I'm sure everyone is) am very thankful for it.  Custom firmwares certainly aren't dead though, becus25 is looking at upgrading the IE series to 3.50 or 3.51, and hopefully other talented people will look at picking up the custom firmware torch.

Dark_Alex will always be a god and legend of homebrew, it's just too bad that his era has ended.