BlueStacks – Android Emulator for PC and MAC

Around 2 years ago, I used Bluestacks 4 a lot, though mainly for leaving games running in the background while I did other things. Eventually, wanting more than 30 fps on my high end rig, I got Bluestacks 5. Performance never seemed stable when I tried real games, and my rig was assuredly not the issue. After reinstalling, things just started working. I could suddenly run games at higher FPS consistently. It was weird that it just didn’t work the first time, but things happen. I thought nothing of it. The performance was inconsistent, but manageable, and the ads weren’t too bad. They never seemed outright malicious or shoved down my throat. The program worked great for casual emulation from time to time, and it was nice to have. I felt comfortable enough with it to login using my main email. After a while, I just stopped using it and uninstalled.

Then, I tried to reinstall it yesterday. Never have I experienced such a horrid process just to get one program running. I genuinely cannot fathom what exactly went wrong with this program or its website, because it looks more akin to a v1rus than ever before. I’ll start with downloading from their website, which I had to verify 5 or so times to make sure I wasn’t somehow in the wrong place.

The installer download has a horrible name, one that looks like a virus all on its own.

BlueStacksInstaller_5.11.42.1002_native_e050a06f83454df358a40b984ddbec9e_MzsxNQ==

If you can honestly tell me that an official file with that many random characters in it looks legit, I would be beyond baffled. Lets look at a few more, shall we?

BlueStacksInstaller_5.11.50.1017_native_11ca99152eac51a9a7bd2b5b47fa3d8c_MDs1LDM7MTUsMTsxNSw0OzE1

BlueStacksInstaller_5.11.50.1017_native_30a35b095130b0e4c66fb321580d2357_MzsxNQ==_UG9rw6ltb24gVU5JVEU=

I implore you to take note of how these last two are the exact same version, yet their installers have entirely different, and equally sketchy names.

That, however, was just the start. The first download worked fine, and installed mostly. That was when it told me to enable Hyper-V. Weird, since I had just done that with Google’s PC Play platform, but sure. After enabling it using Bluestack’s enabler, as my PC didn’t have the option for it, and rebooting…the app didn’t work. Just a blackscreen. Wouldn’t even load. Okay, let’s uninstall and reinstall with another version. Maybe I downloaded the wrong one.

This is where I learn that every time you download the installer, it has a different name if you download from another page. Every single time I clicked that download button, be it from their home page, support page, or help page, the file was always, always different. Add to that the very, VERY virus-esque onscreen popup showing you where to click once it downloaded, and I was getting genuinely concerned.