shadPS4 0.20: Bloodborne officially online on PC with shadNet

shadPS4 0.20 and the shadNet 0.1.0 server came out on the same day: Bloodborne online play becomes official on the PS4 emulator for PC.


Two releases on the same day

On 14 October 2026, the shadPS4 team released shadNet 0.1.0, presented as the “first official stable release” of its online play server, then, a few hours later, the emulator shadPS4 0.20.0. The release notes put it plainly: online play in Bloodborne is now “officially available”. This release is dedicated to Stephen, a project developer who is taking a break for his studies.


What is shadNet?

PSN servers do not talk to emulators: shadNet replaces them. It is a self-hosted server, written in C++ with Qt, modelled on RPCN, the online server of the PS3 emulator RPCS3. Version 0.1.0 supports:

• the online trophies;
• the friends list, invitations and online presence;
• the matchmaking (finding games);
• the leaderboards;
• a STUN server for connections between players, and a client version check.

What changes in shadPS4 0.20

• The PS4 network library (sceNet) has been rewritten, with peer-to-peer support.
• New graphics functions are emulated, and rendering gains texture cache optimisations.
• On macOS, new CPU patches (SSE4a); on Linux, static application of these patches.
• A 33 ms smoothing wrongly applied to the controller's sticks and triggers is gone.

Good to know

The shadNet repository lists no official public server: to play together, one player has to host the server, or you join a community one. The notes do not detail what works in Bloodborne co-op: be careful before promising a complete multiplayer session. As always, the emulator uses your own games, copied from your PS4.
To install and configure the emulator, follow our shadPS4 tutorial. The previous version was covered in our news on RPCS3 0.0.43 and shadPS4 0.19.


Sources: shadPS4 0.20.0 (GitHub) · shadNet 0.1.0 (GitHub) · shadNet (GitHub)