As you all know, PCSX2 is a free open source project that has been in development since early 2001. For all these years the team has tried to give you the best emulator possible, with everyone working on it voluntarily.
Now, after 12 years, development has slowed down considerably. This is due to both, the increased difficulty in ironing out the persistent bugs and also lack of motivation from the few remaining developers to dedicate the time that is needed.
A few months ago a representative of AVG, the maker of a well-known anti-virus solution, contacted us about a partnership offer. After carefully considering the proposal, the team decided to accept the partnership with AVG which will generate some much-needed income by bundling the AVG SafeGuard product with PCSX2.
The money generated from this partnership will be divided among the team members to provide incentive and motivation to further improve PCSX2. Using it we can invest in special hardware, recruit new coders or pay some bills, freeing up time for the project.
What this means for the end-user:
- Our full installer for the official windows release (and ONLY that) will now come bundled with the AVG SafeGuard toolbar. When installing users will be free to opt-out and NOT install it.
- If you decide to accept the AVG toolbar, you will directly help the team keep PCSX2 going.
- Users will have increased protection against visiting potentially dangerous websites, reducing the chance of getting viruses.
- The SafeGuard toolbar can be uninstalled like any other windows program. If you require further asssistance in the removal process we will be happy to help.
We care for our users and we have accepted this offer after being ensured the toolbar is harmless and can be easily uninstalled if and when a user decides to. Still, if any of you have any problem you can ask for help in our forum and we will do our best to help you.
In the end, we believe this move will be for the benefit of the project and will play a significant role in improving PCSX2.
That said, we are already gearing up for a 1.2.0 release, so we will keep you posted when that happens! 😊