I’ve been dipping in and out of classic game emulation for years now, but one trend that I hadn’t really appreciated until recently was the use of “spoof” APK versions that you won’t find in the Google Play Store. In other words, developers are shipping their game emulators disguised as other apps. Why would they do that? Well, it’s all about maximizing performance.
The theory is simple: most smartphones optimize for specific use cases, often sacrificing peak performance for many apps to reduce temperatures and prolong battery life. Your web browser doesn’t need to run your chip at full tilt, after all. However, some devices game the system by unlocking maximum performance for listed applications, sometimes for specific games, and occasionally to improve their benchmark results. By “spoofing” one app to appear as another, a developer can trick the system into unlocking maximum performance that might not have been otherwise available. This is pretty handy if you’re trying to emulate something extremely demanding.