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Just over a year ago, PS2 emulator AetherSX2 made a splash when it hit the Play Store as a surprisingly capable ARM-based PS2 emulator that could get solid performance Android devices, even some mid-range phones (depending on the game). The project left early access in July 2022, and development has continued steadily since then. However, today, the emulator's website was taken down and replaced with a post from the project's sole developer, Tahlreth, explaining that development has been "indefinitely suspended," blaming this decision on "neverending impersonating, complaints, demands, and now death threats."

"AetherSX2 was always meant to be a fun hobby for me, not profit driven," writes Tahlreth. "It doesn't make sense to continue working on a hobby which isn't fun anymore." They also warn of a number of "scammers" and imposters on social media who claim to represent AetherSX2, but do not.

The AetherSX2 Discord is also currently locked and not accepting new members, though it's unclear if this is a temporary measure.

It appears as though these frustrations with community complaints have been building for some time. In a developer update blog posted in July, Tahlreth discusses some new "micro-optimizations," before addressing complaints that the emulator cannot run on certain underpowered devices, explaining that these small optimization measures emphasize how little there is to do in terms of improving performance. They goes on to write, "Sorry, but your little Cortex-A53 is never going to cut it, so please stop saying 'AetherSX2 is unoptimized, give them time/devs need to work harder', there's never going to be a 5-10x improvement in performance in these scenarios, which is what you'd need. Instead, we'd like to point out the competition, and let you draw your own conclusions as to which implementations are 'optimized' and not."

Downloads are still available at https://www.aethersx2.com/archive/ and the Google Play Store, but no more builds will be developed in the foreseeable future, if ever.

Source

 

[gnmmarechal]

Pretty unfortunate, but it is what it is.

 

[Purple_Shyguy]

I try to help out with support installing and running with Xbox emulators on discord and my god there's LOTS of people who don't have the faintest clue about these things.

So I can only imagine the amount of people asking "can you optimise it to run on my 7 year old iPad" and shit like that. Just never ending

 

[The Catboy]

Once again, assholes online ruin the fun for everyone. I hope it goes open source so it’s not dead in the water

 

[Blue]

how is cyberbullying real? like, just close your eyes

Even if you don't take offence to the demands/insults/threats, no point in working on something if you don't enjoy or get any benefit from it anymore especially when the community who it's being made for don't appreciate/are rude about it. It is is free software at the end of the day. The license practices sound shady for sure though.

 

[raxadian]

A shame this died, but I guess the Trolls won.

 

[K3Nv2]

Why are emu devs like this? Start a killer emulator project, then drop it before it's done.

Things go deeper than we see, death threats, potential lawsuits, crying, stress. Some think devs don't have personal lives that are more important than playing MGS2 on your toaster. We should just be grateful what we have today to take an underwhelming $200 device load an iso on it and hit start is phenomenal to me and huge fu to people scalping old school consoles that attempt to sell it at today's MSRP value when we should be able to go into a goodwill and pick up said device for under $50 and bring it home with no issues besides a little repair and modifications here and there.

Attention is and will always be a mothereffer.

 

[ertaboy356b]

Oh no, youtubers will be sad lmao. Aethersx2 is a good project but I heard it has GPL issues. Maybe it had a DMCA takedown or something between the lines.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Guess that leaves the Play! PS2 emulator for Android.

Forgot about DamonPS2

 

[Kioku]

Oh no, youtubers will be sad lmao. Aethersx2 is a good project but I heard it has GPL issues. Maybe it had a DMCA takedown or something between the lines.

Should change your name to “tl;dr pls” since you clearly didn’t read anything…

 

[Shubshub]

Y'all complaining here are the exact reason he cited for dropping the project

The community will never change and y'all just prove it every time

 

[Snintendog]

Nothing new guy just did a port job of PCSX2 and kept its source closed then whined when peoples started to see the con.

 

[godreborn]

Is xbsx2 the same? I think you could use pcsx2 config. Thing was updated almost daily. Good job scene for making another dev quit.

 

[orangy57]

Hopefully he open-sources the project. None of this is surprising in the world of phone emulators tho since complaining children comes with the platform. It's the first device most kids get nowadays and they complain about performance because they can't afford anything better. it's kinda like the tempers who used to ask for gamecube emulators on 3ds, it's all the kids can afford and they don't really understand how the hardware works.

If tahlreth didn't want to get involved with the exact crowd his phone emulator attracts he shouldn't have created a discord server.

 

[ov3rkill]

I bet this is DamonPS2's doing.

 

[Dontuuch17]

If tahlreth didn't want to get involved with the exact crowd his phone emulator attracts he shouldn't have created a discord server.

I recall also thinking it was bad news that he had a discord. Then I read his statements about toxic whiny communities in the beginning and thought, "oh, well I guess he gets these people are crazy needy and not to take anything they say seriously."

Wrong.

Maybe it's one of these things where even though you expect annoyance, it still doesn't mean you won't get annoyed.

 

[RAHelllord]

What, the gaming community is full of entitled children and maladjusted adults that suck the joy out of everything??? I would have never guessed.

Hopefully someone else can pick up the project from them and actually respects the license of the source material, powerful ARM chips are only going to become more popular so having more well working emulators will beneficial in the long term

 

[Bladexdsl]

wouldn't have worked anyway dolphin on android is absolute garbage can't even play 1080p without it running in slow mo and this is on the shield tv pro the best there is. so a ps2 emu would not have run any better

 

[Guacaholey]

Just make it open source (I'm pretty sure it's just modified PCSX2 code to run on ARM anyway). That way other people can contribute and people can actually SEE how well it's optimized.

 

[YugamiSekai]

Forgot about DamonPS2

For good reason.

 

[granville]

wouldn't have worked anyway dolphin on android is absolute garbage can't even play 1080p without it running in slow mo and this is on the shield tv pro the best there is. so a ps2 emu would not have run any better

Not sure if this is sarcasm. It already works if you have decent hardware. Shield TV is 7 years old and the CPU is extremely slow by today's standards. Even my now aging Galaxy S10 with a Snapdragon 855 (which itself has been far surpassed in the past couple of years) is far and away more powerful than the Shield.

Both Dolphin and AetherSX2 work quite well on high end ARM chips from the past couple of years. The emulators are/were also still being improved to this day, with Dolphin recently receiving a substantial boost to performance in certain demanding games such as Mario Galaxy.