The PCSX2 team's statement regarding the "DamonPS2" emulator

[Bositman]

Hello all! We hope you had a Happy New Year. The PCSX2 team hopes to continue making further progress throughout 2018 and into 2019! However, today we are writing to both you and the emulation/open-source community on a more serious matter.

Introduction and Background Information
You may have heard from various sources that a second PS2 emulator for Android was seen on the Google Play Store called DamonPS2. Initially, we were very happy to learn that a new developer had taken the initiative to begin work on a new PS2 emulator for a mobile platform; a daunting task in itself that we applaud them for. After further investigation however, we learned that there were rather striking resemblances to PCSX2 contained in the new emulator.

The first piece of evidence that we learned was that the GameIndex.dbf file distributed with the emulator (screenshot) contained patches that were specific to PCSX2, and furthermore would not work elsewhere. We were also able to find matching CDVD strings using a text editor, such as the message returned by the PCSX2 console when an PSX/PSone disc is inserted. Further evidence included a matching file structure and graphical output that mirrors GSdx.

In response to this evidence, we contacted the developer to notify them about their violation of the GNU General Public License which PCSX2 is protected under, since by all evidence they are using PCSX2 code without releasing the source code and we gave them a time frame in which to correct this issue. We hoped the issue could be resolved amicably for both projects. However the developer would go on to claim that they did not steal the PCSX2 source code, yet they offered us an extortionate sum of money to stay silent, which as you can assert we did not accept. In addition, they said that they would become open-source once the emulator reached 80 million downloads (not very realistic...). In their final email to us (which we did not respond back to) the developers wanted to further "bargain" by setting up a licensing scheme; which we would not accept under any circumstances regardless.

Final Actions and Closing Comments
As a result of the circumstances and the time frame lapsing, the PCSX2 Team submitted a DMCA takedown for the "DamonPS2" app on the Google Play Store. The developer took down the emulator before the DMCA had a chance to go through as they would have been notified about the DMCA and probably wanted to avoid being banned from the Google Play Store, citing some reason to their users about the description being bad, something which we've never seen Google remove an app for. We will monitor the situation and see what happens when the developer returns the app to the store.

To further clarify any confusion you may have about this matter, our actions were not done for any sort of personal/reputable gain or out of spite. The PCSX2 team has always encouraged new developments to take place whether it be inside a pull request or outside of the repository as we've seen here. Ultimately, the developer's failure to comply with the GNU General Public License in a reasonable time-frame left the team with no choice but to take the appropriate actions. We would like to take this moment to send our sincerest thanks to the community for their wonderful support over the past 15 years!

-The PCSX2 team

[dabore]

80 million? and they sold it for 10 buckets? that's almost a billion dollars. how much they sold? you coulda taken the money. sure thing is, ps2 emulation on a device that has no dvd drive reeks of big rom smuggling. not that it matters. most old console games are old backups. not sure if sony woulda done something against this one tho. old console stuff for them. mmh.

now, congrats for tackling and winning this lil legal battle.

[CK1]

80 million? and they sold it for 10 buckets? that's almost a billion dollars. how much they sold? you coulda taken the money. sure thing is, ps2 emulation on a device that has no dvd drive reeks of big rom smuggling. not that it matters. most old console games are old backups. not sure if sony woulda done something against this one tho. old console stuff for them. mmh.

now, congrats for tackling and winning this lil legal battle.

Well it's not exactly over yet. They'll be back within a few weeks supposedly.

[Maarcis12]

Well it's not exactly over yet. They'll be back within a few weeks supposedly.

yeap, i can conquer with that as they posted this yesterday or two days ago depending on time zones: https://www.facebook.com/DamonPS2/posts/961756180642893

[Maarcis12]

What do you think of TechUtopia's videos on this regard? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29ycf30HtZ4 I'm personally not buying what he says.

[CK1]

What do you think of TechUtopia's videos on this regard? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29ycf30HtZ4 I'm personally not buying what he says.

He's a paid reviewer. He's going to side towards DamonPS2 rather than us because he was paid to review the app originally.

Also, the comment section is full of ***** retards.

[Maarcis12]

He's a paid reviewer. He's going to side towards DamonPS2 rather than us because he was paid to review the app originally.

Also, the comment section is full of ***** retards.

well, couldn't said it better. Hehehehe, well, i have a fate in you guys since you had 15 years (16 in March) of blood, sweat and tears dumped into this work. I'm personally seeing this "80 million" thing as obvious excuse to not let people know what's inside this teddy bear, so that definitely reeks like Surströmming over there.

[Blyss Sarania]

The big thing people are missing I think is this. WE HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO GAIN BY LYING ABOUT THIS! Whereas they have everything to gain. We've already made it clear we aren't interested in porting PCSX2 to android ourselves. We aren't losing any money by them making DamonPS2. Whereas they are making a lot of money by selling it.

So which is more likely:

1. We are complete dicks who had the app removed for no other reason than we are dicks.
2. We tried to work with them but they wouldn't listen because they are making lots of money on our stolen source code.

Hmm... I wonder...

[Blyss Sarania]

Oh furthermore if we are just interested in being dicks and preventing people from playing PS2 games on their smartphones then why haven't we gone after Play! yet?

Hint: Maybe because they didn't blatantly steal our source code and violate the GPL?

[Maarcis12]

I'm personally believe you, guys, on that it's cool to have other guys tackling PS2 emulation even on Android, but what i'm getting with DamonPS2 is someone purposely trying to hide something from public by taking it down from Google Play and then reinstating possibly in near future and not disclosing, what code base they're using on their emulator, not to mention using work of two teams and having monetary gain from this, which is just sad