Development of shadPS4 was started by George Moralis[10][11][12] in October 2022.[13] Moralis previously worked on the PS1 emulator PCSX and founded the PS2 emulator PCSX2,[14][15] going by the user name "shadow". At the time, PS4 emulation had not advanced very far, with most existing emulators being only able to run 2D games reliably.[16][9] On July 2, 2024, shadPS4 version 0.1.0 was released, being able to launch Sonic Mania, One Piece: Unlimited World Red and some other 3D games such as Resident Evil: Origins Collection and Persona 5.[17][16] A major factor contributing to its support for more 3D games was that addition of a shader recompiler to its architecture.[18][19]Bloodborne could run and access the character creation menu, but had a major graphical bug causing a red filter to be applied to the screen.[6][11][20] By July 31, it could run Red Dead Redemption at 25 frames per second,[21][8][22] and it was able to launch Dark Souls.[8] By August 19, version 0.2.1 was in development and was able to run both the alpha and retail version of Bloodborne without crashing, with some users able to run the game at more than 60 FPS.[5] However, not all textures could be properly loaded, and several game specific hacks were used in order to run it.[10][9][23] In early September rendering was greatly improved, with support being added for screen light occlusion, depth of field, dynamic lighting, and shadows.[24] As of December 7, 2024, 119 titles are listed by shadPS4 as being "in game," with most of them being 2D games.[25]
