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As with most sought-after things on the web, emulation has also been the subject of '''scams''' and confidence tricks that pretend to offer either an emulator that doesn't exist, especially for consoles that have just been released and as such aren't documented and/or emulated yet, or a particular port of a popular video game such as ''Grand Theft Auto''.
==Background==These scams all typically operate on the same modus operandi -- present operandi–present themselves as a working emulator, typically with faked screenshots or video footage from a popular video game running at full speed on a PC or a mobile platform, without the glitches or other anomalies that would have occurred had it been on a legitimate emulator in early development. The websites used to host the scam are also made to look and feel legitimate, with some such as PCSX4 going so far as to opening a Github repository supposedly to give further verisimilitude especially to the average user. But of course, the legitimacy stops at the download page, where the impressionable or desperate user would be presented with a survey or a download for potentially unwanted programs or cryptocurrency miners. It's either that the "emulator" does "exist" but is merely an ''empty graphical shell'' written in Visual Basic .NET or C# coded to give out a fake error message, or the download does not exist at all; the survey just led the unwitting user into a wild goose chase with some malware sprinkled along the way.
As mentioned above, scammers would claim to be the first to successfully emulate a particular platform, even though there hasn't been much work done as far as reverse-engineering the original hardware goes; exceptions exist such as with the [[Game Boy Advance emulators|Game Boy Advance]] having its first emulator<ref>[https://www.zophar.net/gba/gbaemu.html GBAEmu]</ref> released ''a year'' before the actual hardware made it to store shelves, though that was due to a massive developer kit leak. And even then, it takes ''years'' to improve if not perfect an emulator's ability to run commercial games, especially for platforms with complex architectures such as the [[PlayStation 3 emulators|PlayStation 3]].
Said surveys are, by essence, a trojan horse, as internet fraudsters and charlatans prey on less-savvy users who may not understand the inner workings of an emulator (or video game hardware in general), and thus profit from their gullibility whenever said users are made to fill out useless surveys. Scammers operate on a commission basis, where they are paid for each successful survey filled up or adware downloaded. Not to mention that less-than-scrupulous ad networks can and will profit from a person's private information for them to sell to the highest bidder. While it is easy for the likes of Nintendo to file a cease-and-desist order and have those sites taken down for trademark infringement, this is hampered by previous legal precedent has made ''legitimate'' emulation legal, thereby insulating scammers from liability, and the fact that most if not all scammers operate offshore, sidestepping any DMCA ruling against them.
==Variants==
Variations of the scam include, but are not limited to:
* Fake websites with the appearance of a legitimate emulation project, complete with doctored screenshots and video footage along with seemingly-convincing yet patently false claims about compatibility and/or performance, and with some setting up an equally phony Github repo again to give the illusion of legitimacy.
* Videos from less-than-reputable sources claiming to offer an emulator or a mobile port of a console game, examples being ''Grand Theft Auto V'' for Android or iOS.
* Scam apps on Google Play. Due to the anarchic nature of Google's app ecosystem, it is easy for fraudsters and script kiddies to either upload an adware-laced fork of an existing open-source emulator, pass them off as their own and profit off of it, or cobble up an outright fake like those "PS2 emulators" that sprung up for a time prior to [[DamonPS2]]'s release, which are little more than [[PPSSPP]] deceptively repackaged and riddled with advertisements.
==For your consideration==
