In 2026, Google will implement a new policy that is all but guaranteed to hit the emulation community hard (albeit slowly at first). Starting with next year’s mainline Android releases, Google will be blocking sideloading of unverified Android apps. The updated policy requires that developers verify their identity with Google. With companies like Nintendo becoming increasingly aggressive toward developers these days, it’s unlikely that developers of apps like Eden and Azahar will jump at the opportunity to give their information to a company more than happy to pass it along to Nintendo’s lawyers.
Sideloading has been a major facet of emulation on Android for years. Developers of apps such as Eden, Winlator, Azahar and GameNative develop in a legal grey area. Instead of releasing these apps to the Play Store, devs instead use direct distribution channels like GitHub to bypass Google’s erratic Play Store policies and update processes. Direct distribution allows for fast development with nightly builds, streamlined collaboration with community members and easy forking of open source code.
Changing the verification requirement changes everything. Many emulator developers are hobbyists that work and develop under a pseudonym to avoid prosecution by console manufacturers. Linking their identity to their development projects could scare many of them away, leading them to discontinue development altogether.
This comes at an especially frustrating time, as we’ve finally reached a performance plateau with the hardware being released by companies like Retroid and AYN. The only thing holding back new performance gains on Android-based devices is the current state of Android emulation.
For people who use emulators, this means that emulation progress could all but stall once handheld manufacturers start adopting these new versions of Android. Google may call this security, but for the retro gaming community, it’s putting the brakes on an open platform that is increasingly being closed. The freedom that made the Android platforms the platform of choice for emulation is now under threat.
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Google claims that it’s for security, but it’s really just for controlling what people can do with their devices.
Sounds to me Linux is going to become even more popular.
It means the G company wants to be like Little Apple, controlling what people can and can’t do on the devices they bought. Why else did they locked the bootloader before? This situation is getting more and more absurd.
Oh, and if nothing is gonna be done, it will ether mean the death of emulators on android, or a lot of forking the open source code.
On the forking part, that’s not really the issue, you don’t have to fork Android to bypass the verification because it’s not part of AOSP, you just need to install a version of Android free of Google Play Services. The only problem is many parts of the system come from those services, for example the localisation that uses wifi network databases and mobile network cell tower strength along with GPS to give you a better localisation, that is part of such services
Devs will most likely develop something to bypass this security… It happens everywhere and only stops the groups of people who can’t follow seperate setup instructions.
It sounds to me like apple’s gonna win this game.
Maybe this will get banned too. An executive order was signed preventing banks from discriminating customers when purchasing games on platforms like steam. It’s moves like this I hope will prevent the continued pressure to show your ID. “Tickets please!”
The banks and corporate America are desperate to maintain control of the population. I say desperate, because they have no chance. This won’t last.
It’ll be the EU that has the balls to do this and actually protect customers. America doesn’t care. Nintendo has BEEN flagrantly illegally abusing the DMCA against their own fans who are doing things wildly within fair use, and getting away with it. Palworld is the first to actually stand up and smack them back. The EU is why iphones have usb-c and the internet allows you to reject tracking cookies. We need the EU to step in, in a way that is so hard for Google to comply with, that they can’t justify making two versions of android for the US and the EU market. That’s our last hope, but Im not holding my breath.
They already block sideloading unless you turn the security off. So they’re going to remove our ability to turn that block off? The whole reason go choose Android over Apple is because you get more direct control of the hardware and software.
Guess custom roms will become even more popular, and hopefully this will drive a streamlining of that process to make it even easier for people to take advantage of. They can take sideloading out of my cold dead hands lol
Looks like Linux is back on the menu boys!
Grateful that I can chuck Android TF out of my Pixel for Graphene lol
Sounds like we’re just going to have more Linux devices soon. Cool
Gabe we need you now
This shouldn’t affect handheld emulators as much as smartphones. Handheld emulators can just use a lightly forked version of Android without those restrictions. Something like Fire OS (maybe someone can pay gamma some real money to develop before launch) and then users can sideload the Play store if they want it just like you do on Fire and Gamma OS.
They have the nerve to pull this BS after removing most of the good apps from the Play Store and replacing them with pay to play “free” garbage and endless monthly subscription nonsense. I’ve converted to APKs my purchases they pulled from the Play Store, they originally came from there, will I even be able to install them after this fascist crap takes hold? Ridiculous
At my opinion Google put another nail in their coffin by doing this. What Android has been for me is the freedom of variation. I’ve followed Android from day one and now, at age of 67 years I’d don’t know what to do as I’m a Retro gamer too. 🤬🤬
Just turn off WiFi
Hey what do you mean by turning off WIFI? I’m getting confused over this sht
I intensely dislike the idea of Google preventing us from sideloading unless we get permission. Android was founded on the premise of user freedom and choice. Now those seem to he slipping away.
This is America. Late stage capitalism. Google can’t innovate anymore, they’re too big and unwieldy with skittish shareholders terrified of risk. So they have to increase control and data harvesting more and more every year because the idea of a healthy, profitable long term business just doesn’t exist anymore, and growth must be perpetual. So gotta clamp down on the user more and more, and they see it works because people still love apple for some reason (I got my first ever apple device, an iPad, for med school, and it’s such a buggy nightmare piece of crap with wildly unintuitive ways to do almost anything, every step taking more actions than android, but I have to use it for school so I’m stuck with a device that can’t do a lot of things my old Samsung tablet from 2021 can that also can’t even stay connected reliably to the “legendary” apple pencil pro)
I don’t want to learn a new OS yet again, but linux may be the future for high end emulation. A steamOS fork for ARM might do it. And I’m half tempted these days to just ditch a smartphone altogether. HMD just canceled the skyline 2 which was a super nice mid tier phone that was completely and cheaply repairable for the US market, because every reviewer of the phone ignored the fact that you could replace the battery yourself for 20 bucks or your entire screen for 90, with one screw, and focused on the fact that it cost like 10% more than similar phones which were cometely unfixable.
I just hate having been such a tech person in the 90s and 2000s. Ever since about 2014, tech stopped working for us and started working only for cartoonishly evil corporate interests
Sideloading is not a crime. Not registering with Google for developing, is not either. For decades, sideloading has been the natural way of programs to be installed in a computer. Asking for registration or even forcing developers to go through one single application store is simply an abuse from the OS manufacturer, and a slap in the face in case of Android, whose nature is (or was) the open source, the freedom, in opposition with iOS and their closed OSes.
Complain. Fight back. Report.
Is OUR right, not theirs.
Man could we just once have a huge corporation not be actively evil. Google is just apple now.
I want a device that has widespread use for convenience. But I have my limits on how much abuse I’m willing to take just so those corporations can continue to live with the capitalist fallacy of perpetual growth.
Here’s hoping Linux for phones gets a lot better a lot quicker.
And retro gaming handhelds can probably also move back to Linux. It’d be disruptive, but steamOS is getting closer and closer to widespread release, and porting the more popular, more powerful chips like the snapdragon 867 and 8gen2/gen3 would require another fork for ARM, but I’d be here for it.
In the meantime, android handheld devs can hold off on needing to update to the version of android to this death knell and just keep them on a previous version for a good while before security updates become too much a problem, or maybe we can pre-jailbreak them.
I genuinely hate the internet now. Since about 2014 it has just been an increasing cesspool. Making the internet available to the average person thru smartphones brought in so much money and corporate monster behavior, that it’s ruined. The internet sucks now.