Games @lemmy.world mesamune @lemmy.world 4 mo. ago

PS2 emulator AetherSX2 removed from Google Play Store

gbatemp.net PS2 emulator AetherSX2 removed from Google Play Store

The highly controversial PlayStation 2 emulator for Android devices, AetherSX2, has been removed from the Google Play Store starting from March 10th, 2024. This doesn't come as a surprise for many, though, as the AetherSX2 emulator halted development entirely back in 2023, with the developer...

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Was surprised at this since it's not connected to Nintendo in any way, but it turns out it's not actually related to the Yuzu news:

This doesn't come as a surprise for many, though, as the AetherSX2 emulator halted development entirely back in 2023, with the developer specifically mentioning the "neverending impersonating, complaints, demands, and now death threats". Although, it took almost a year for the actual emulator app to be taken down from the Play Store, following the discontinuation of the project
- What kind of sicko sends death threats to someone for developing an emulator
  
  Open source devs have to deal with the most entitled, messed up people, I swear
  
  I’ve heard that the emulation on android community is extremely toxic because a lot of people don’t know anything about emulators and then get pissed when their shitty phone can’t run every game at 4k 60 fps
  
  Same thing happened to Near/Byuu the creator of higan (SNES emulator).
  
  https://kotaku.com/the-brilliant-snes-emulator-creator-known-as-near-has-d-1847182851
  
  people who have underperforming or incompatible hardware who hound developers for optimaztion on a project that was free.
  
  people tend to not read app requirements (or the fucking manual) because their too lazy to help themselves before bugging someone else.
  
  The dev actually got caught faking death threats at one point, and the dev routinely told users in his discord to kill themselves
  
  Entitled teenagers from poor countries on low end hardware mostly
  
  Sony?
  
  You mean besides bootlicking Nintendo fanboys?
- The dev was a toxic person who had mental health issues. Not the first time they freaked out and claimed they were being targeted for harassment and throwing a hissy fit and leaving while being a toxic turd to so many people along the way
  
  So what you're saying is you were part of the problem?
The dev was a toxic person who had mental health issues. Not the first time they freaked out and claimed they were being targeted for harassment and throwing a hissy fit and leaving while being a toxic turd to so many people along the way

Told people to kill themselves for asking questions and actually got caught making up "evidence of targeted harassment" it was a pretty big issue in the community at the time. He made up death threats. For attention.

At first people were sympathetic until we learned this isn't the first time this dev has done this

You can also find links to screen caps of how he was an asshole all of the time in his discord, banning people left and right for asinine reasons
- Who are you referring to?
  
  Are you talking about the second dev? I was pretty aware of the community at the time and didn't hear anything like this about the original dev.
  
  There was only one dev for the original project, but he went by two names. (If someone else had taken up the work I don't know, I got a steam deck and do all my emulation on that)
  
  Stenzek was his original username, he changed it to Tahlreth to get away from his reputation. He had previously abandoned another project due to harassment that turned out to be over blown. He claimed people were stealing his code and could never prove it and claimed harassment and abandoned his project. Was also a dick to people and was banned from forums for his tone.
  
  Pretty much as soon as I joined this discord he was a dick and claiming harassment, and at the time I didn't even know it was the same person. I found out later, not too long before he quit this one.
  
  And after he quit Aether he sabotaged the last build he uploaded by making it run worse and putting ads in it.
  
  "If everywhere you go smells like shit, check your shoe", honestly. Rude, crying all the time, claiming harassment, claiming theft of code, making up and then deleting death threats, etc. Several years of history of just horrible behavior
While unfortunate, it's not difficult to still run AetherSX2 or its successor, NetherSX2. There was some drama around the Play Store version of AetherSX2 anyway. The Play Store version had ads.

If you want to run an older version of AetherSX2, I recommend v1.5-3668. I believe that is the last version before ads were added. It is missing some performance improvements though. At this point you would have to find an APK of it to install manually.

What I really recommend is to use NetherSX2, which is the successor to AetherSX2. There are two versions, Classic and Modern. Classic is generally the better performer unless you want to run certain games - specifically snowblind engine games (Baldur's Gate, Champions of Norrath). You just download the patcher from github, download an APK of AetherSX2, run the patcher, and copy/install the resulting APK file.
- I’ve just stuck with AetherSx that came on my Retroid, though I’ve heard of Nethersx also. When you say Modern can run the Snowblind engine games, does that mean that fire doesn’t tank the frame rate on that version? You can’t have both classic and modern installed at the same time, can you?
- You're right about 3668, and the play store version also has worse performance. The classic is like a "reskinned" 3668 and the modern is a "reskinned" play store version that removes ads and fixes issues.
  
  I haven't tried nether yet, only aether 3668, how's it compare?
  
  I haven't noticed a huge difference between NetherSX2 classic and 3668, but the only thing I've been playing is FFX International. Both play it just fine on my device (Moto One 5G Ace running LineageOS).
It sucks, but you can see it coming.
I really like this app. Sad to see it get pulled.
What's the alternative then?

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