AetherSX2 was the closest thing to PCSX2 originally. It actually worked very well but unfortunately, it was closed-source (at least the Android version), and the lead developer had enough of us, so the emulator was discontinued and died off. Is there any work on bringing PCSX2 back to Android?
Basically yes, the developer was harrassed. People demanded the developer to make faster progress or to support devices which could not ever offer reasonable performance for emulation of the PS2. I wouldn’t be surprised if he received death/doxx/SWAT threats. People treated the guy like trash and expected him to just be okay with it. Sadly, they ruined it for everyone.
Its hard to say why these people acted this way, but then again, why does anyone do anything bad? There are probably as many reasons as people on Earth, but that doesn’t make it okay. Just an unfortunate reality.