Hadlee Simons / Android Authority
TL;DR
- A developer has claimed that the team behind GameHub copied his code without attribution.
- GameHub developer GameSir denied the initial claim, but other developers have also accused the studio of copying.
- This comes years after GameSir’s Nintendo Switch emulator was mired in controversy over stolen code.
GameSir recently released GameHub v6.0, bringing several major improvements to the PC game emulator on Android. However, this news was overshadowed by fresh claims that the company had copied code from other Android developers as part of GameHub’s development.
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This latest round of copying accusations was kick-started by developer StevenMX, who created the Winlator Ludashi fork. He asserted that the GameHub studio had copied his work on a Vulkan-based renderer and framed it as their own. GameSir defended itself on Discord (see below) by asserting that its work was independent. It also urged people to decompile the app.
Evidently, the developer took on the challenge, arguing that GameHub’s decompiled app contained code taken from other developers and projects. These projects include the aforementioned Vulkan renderer, Termux X11, and a Vulkan graphics wrapper that improves support for non-Snapdragon devices. Developer leagoo in particular says he’s “95.7% certain” that GameSir copied his graphics wrapper work. One of several clues cited by leagoo is that he used a “specific 6-element push_constants table,” but ended up not using two of these elements. The GameHub app also contains this specific table, including the two unused elements.
It’s not uncommon for developers to grab code from open-source projects for use in their own apps. However, the open-source licenses associated with many of these projects often require anyone using this code to release the modified code. Indeed, StevenMX urged GameSir to make the emulator open source and publish all the code or to credit developers appropriately.
This wouldn’t be the first time GameSir courted controversy regarding stolen or unattributed code. The company’s EggNS emulator allowed you to play Switch games on Android, but the company apparently stole code from other Nintendo Switch emulators.
The news also comes after the company confirmed that it fixed a major issue affecting Samsung owners. More specifically, some Galaxy owners reported that they were unable to play games via GameHub following the v6.0 update. It seems like this issue may have been related to Samsung’s One UI 8.5 software.
In any event, we’ve asked GameSir’s representatives for comment regarding these copying accusations. We’ll update the article as soon as the company gives us a response. But between GameNative, GameHub Lite, and Winlator, there’s certainly no shortage of ways to play PC games on your Android device.
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