TL;DR
- The aPS3e PS3 emulator has been removed from GitHub, possibly because of copyright and licensing issues.
- The developer Aenu’s account also seems to have been removed.
- aPS3e had quickly risen to fame in recent days for bringing quality PS3 emulation to Android.
In a sudden and somewhat expected move, the aPS3e emulator, which had briefly stirred up excitement among Android gamers hoping to emulate PS3 titles on their devices, has disappeared from GitHub.
Developed by a developer known as Aenu, the project may have been taken down after growing concerns over copyright issues, particularly regarding its use of code from the open-source RPCS3 PC emulator. GitHub pages for both the aPS3e emulator and its creator’s account now return a 404 error.
aPS3e had quickly risen to fame in recent days for bringing working PS3 emulation to Android. However, red flags began to emerge when the developer, Aenu, who identified themselves in vague terms as a “Chinese developer living in the countryside,” started seeking donations in exchange for the source code.
What was even more troubling was the claim that the project, despite being built on the open-source RPCS3 emulator, was made closed-source. This is a clear violation of GitHub’s General Public License (GPL), which states that any derivative software based on other open-source work cannot be closed-source.
Meanwhile, the RPCS3 emulator for PS3 emulation on PC remains open-source and freely available. Under open-source licenses, forking the project is allowed, but creating a closed-source version based on that work is not okay.
What happens now?
While the aPS3e emulator has been removed from GitHub, users who had previously installed the APK should still be able to use it, at least in theory.
Some users are reporting that the emulator is unstable, with games either failing to launch or crashing unexpectedly.
“I’ve been tinkering with this thing for a few hours and I can’t get any games to work. I got a couple of them to boot, but after a little while, they just crash unexpectedly while also turning my phone into a hot pocket and eating my battery,” a user wrote on Reddit.
We’ll have to test and see what state the emulator is in now, but our initial testing showed that it mostly worked out of the box, requiring some additional steps and workarounds.
The abrupt disappearance of the emulator and developer from GitHub leaves the future of aPS3e uncertain. As of today, Android users still have no official support for PS3 emulation, with RPCS3’s developers choosing not to pursue an Android version due to toxic users and the proliferation of scam apps on the platform.
