AnyPS5 Has 14.3k Stars and One Game on Its Compatibility List, With No Release Build

AnyPS5, a GPL-2.0 project that rewrites PS5 executables into native Linux and Windows programs, has 14.3k stars and 1.1k forks on GitHub. Its compatibility list names one game, and the repository page shows no release, version or download.

The owner is the GitHub account boykopovar, which lists no other maintainers. The page shows 2,909 commits, 50 open issues and 387 pull requests.

How AnyPS5 turns a PS5 executable into a native program

The README describes a relinker that converts the executable into the target system's native format, with "No emulation or separate runtime process." Sony's system libraries are not shipped. The project writes its own implementations of the system PRX libraries so the converted binary can link to them.

Graphics go through a shader recompiler that produces SPIR-V, the format Vulkan consumes. Errors are blunt: "Unsupported or unexpected states strictly throw std::runtime_error." The library progress badge counts only functions the project already knows, and the README says that is "not of every PS5 system function."

One game on the compatibility list

Dreaming Sarah (PPSA02929) test machine	Frame rate
GTX 1050 Ti, i5-7500 3.4GHz	60 FPS
Intel HD Graphics 620, i5-7200 2.5GHz	36 FPS

The list, docs/user/COMPATIBILITY.md, has no other entries and records no known issues or dates. It marks Windows as "In game, playable". The README describes Dreaming Sarah as a 2D platformer.

The Linux cell is a question mark, even though Linux is named alongside Windows in the project description.

What a French hardware site says about progress

Pause Hardware, in an article by Wael.K last updated on September 25, reports the developer's claim that execution now reaches a game's main function and that exception handling works. The site writes that a commercial game reportedly shows its logo, its main menu and some gameplay with sound, and that this cannot be verified publicly. It also reports that no public build exists and that the developer does not plan a release until a game runs fully on the tool.

None of that appears on the repository page in the form Pause Hardware gives it. The only frame rates in the README are Dreaming Sarah's.

The legal wording in the README

The README states the project is "intended for interoperability, research, preservation, and compatibility purposes". It says it "does not include, distribute, or require copyrighted software, firmware, cryptographic keys, or proprietary libraries."

Users are told they are responsible for how any binaries they use are obtained. The page does not mention game dumps, so it does not say how a user gets the executable the relinker consumes. Pause Hardware gives no specific legal analysis either, saying only that the technical and legal obstacles to projects like this remain considerable.

Stars on a project with no build

A star count of 14.3k on a repository with no release measures interest in the idea. Nobody can run AnyPS5 on a retail game by downloading it, and the project says a release waits on the first full game launch.

Related work on this site: God of War: Chains of Olympus in a browser uses recompilation too, and REA is another reverse-engineering project that went viral on GitHub.