I’ve been having troubles with my computer’s performance for a while, and while I think it’s not due to malware, I think I should explore that in some detail. And this forum is the source of most things I download not verified through steam or other more reputable places. It could be due to third party hosting sites as well, like mega, which many games here are hosted on.
I don’t think this is the case, especially since it’s internet speed that’s troubled me the most, but again, I ought to consider it.
For reference, these are the things I have downloaded from here at the moment
There shouldn’t be any malware or viruses on any file shared on the site. People tend to notice that quickly if it were to happen. The most common thing that happens here is antivirus programs false flagging files as malicious.
You can always use something like Virus Total which is a website that allows you to check files and see if they have any malware.
I believe that some hacked discord accounts related to this website sent people some “Prototype games” that were actually malware, the admins even made an announcement about it. Aside from that I don’t think anyone on this site would send people viruses.
We can never say for sure, but I can say at the current moment we do not have any games reported to us as malware. Posting malware on the site is against our rules and results in the immediate removal of the topic and usually the banning of the user in question.
Most malware that tries to get posted on the site come from spam bot accounts which our automated systems usually catch quite reliably with the sites users usually flagging any that make it through the automated systems. They are the easiest to usually spot since the posts are usually off and the links always look suspect.
Other than that we usually rely on the community at large to flag any programs that look suspect for investigation. Since malware is a very serious threat we will usually will hide and lock the topic in question until we can verify it looks legit.
That being said, especially being more of a hobbyist community, there are quite a few false positives that come up. These are mainly because of what is called application signing which is very common to see skipped in communities like this as most people do not know how or do not care to configure their builds to sign the applications which mostly freaks out windows systems (though macs can get a bit freaked out as well if I remember).
We can not check every game on the site though so we expect users to use common sense and encourage users to scan the games for viruses using their anti-virus software before playing them as well as preform regulars scans of your PC. This will usually get 95% of anything we miss.
I highly doubt anyone in the community would take the effort to produce something and then willingly add any malware to it.
Unwittingly, perhaps, although it’s pretty rare these days as anyone with any intelligence has all manner of antivirus software on their computer.
Only instances I’ve heard of in the past couple of years or so have been, as @Krodmandoon and @grotlover2 say, false positives, or piracy sites repacking games and making their own nasty little additions…
Basically, yep, virus check everything you download, and if there’s any doubt, don’t open it, especially if it’s something that you’ve been sent without asking for it.
edit Just spotted you’ve got what looks like my game in there. I virus check all my files before zipping them, then do a second check on the zip file, so hopefully you’re fairly safe with that one at least.
Sorry it’s been a few days, but thank you all for your replies and patient and tolerant attitude
I did expect it to be so, but now I have more valid reason for it, so I appreciate that
as for application signing, I think maybe there could be some psa about how to do that for developers here, but that’s just an idea, not sure if it’s a good one
