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.