If your anti-virus, anti-malware or anti-spyware software detects that files you downloaded from Gametap (and only those from GT) are infected, it's most likely not true! The best thing to do in this situation is to add all your GT folders to the program in question's exception list. Since I use AVG and Avira, I can explain how to add GT to exception lists for those programs. (More on this at the bottom of this post.)


Here's my experience with various AVs:

RadialPoint:This AV is distributed through many North American ISPs and seems to have no issues with Gametap. Scanned all GT folders in fast mode (skips non-infectable files) March 15 2010, nothing bad from GT.

Microsoft Security Essentials (MSSE) has no false positives relating to GT. Just did a full scan yesterday (Feb 10 2010) and GT's files raised no concern.

Avira: Found 10 viruses in my games folder, affecting Virtual Skipper 5, R6V, R6V2, King's Bounty: TL, GUN, Zoo Tycoon 2, and Blood Ties. (Feb 11 2011)

Also found 4 "viruses" in Titan's Quest, TQ Immortal throne, Mission Runway (heh) and Zoo Tycoon. (June 28, 2010) Turning off all heuristics doesn't help unfortunately.

AVG: Found a false trojan in Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 Deluxe (Feb 11 2011).


Community findings:

Avira: false positive found in Velvet Assassin by JetClarke. (Jul 2010)

Norton 360: found bad files in GUN (Katie916, xanderrose, Jul 2010).

McAfee: -finds virus in Fishdom (scottman54, Sept 28 2010)
-viruses with the GT launcher and some of it's games. (CSQcoa, May 21 2010)

F-Secure: accoring to MrBulldogg, one of the scanners detects a trojan with Tycoon City New York. (Apr 23 2010)

ESET Nod 32, a-squared Anti-Malware, and PC Tools ThreatFire don't find false viruses in GT, subsider34 says.

AVAST! plays really nice with GT (Oct 2010, law3x)

VIPRE has no issues to speak of with GT (Oct 2010, BladeTwinSwords)


Thanks to everyone for their contributions to the list!



How to add GT Games to AVG's exceptions list

1. Open AVG 2011 interface. Click 'Tools' > 'Advanced settings...'.
2. Under 'Resident Shield' click 'Excluded Items' then click 'Add Path'.
3. Browse for your GT games folder. By default, it should be 'C:\GAMETAP\' (you only need to add the root folder, that'll cover all your games.)
4. Make sure the entry gets added and is checked, then click OK.

Sadly, there's no way to stop AVG from finding false viruses in GT's files during scans. As such, I highly recommend people disable automatic healing/removal of found viruses. To do this, expand 'Scans' under 'Advanced Settings...' and check all scan types to make sure the 'Automatically heal/remove all infections' box is unchecked for all types. By default, only the 'Whole computer scan' has this enabled. At the end of a scan, don't click any of the 'Remove All'/'Heal All' buttons, and make sure any files in the GT games folder are de-selected (Ctrl-click) before clicking 'Remove/heal all selected'! If you accidentally quarantine an important file and you want it restored but don't know how, just ask.




How to add GT to your Avira 10 exceptions lists

1. Confirm what your GT games folder's path is ("C:\GAMETAP\GAMES" by default.)
2. Right-click the red and white umbrella and click "Configure AntiVir".
3. Make sure "Expert mode" is checked.
4. Expand "Guard", then "Scan", then click on "Exceptions" and add your GT games folder here.
5. (Optional, if you don't want your scans picking up false positives as well): Expand "Scanner", then "Scan", then click on "Exceptions". Unfortunately in this case, you have to add all of the false positive matches individually. In my experience, the only files that get false alarms are the encrypted EXE application files. For example, to stop Virtual Skipper 5 from being reported as a virus, I added Vsk5.exe and Vsk5Launcher.exe under "Files objects to be omitted by the guard". (After a scan, Avira will tell you exactly what files need to be added to this list.)
8. Click OK to accept everything.

Always be careful when running AV scans. By default, Avira does not quarantine/remove anything until you tell it to, so pay attention to what it finds!

Great info, thanks shawnasativa. I've recently noticed the same thing with Avira.

I'm going to move this to the support section though, and sticky it for awhie.

Oops, I thought that the last time this was mentioned was 6 months ago, and figured a regular reminder was in order. As I see now, it was brought up only 2 months ago and you yourself covered it, sorry about that. It's just that I know this is gonna throw off a lot of people cause it's nice and confusing to anyone not in the know (not to mention quite scary)!

It's too bad, cause I quite like Avira among the free AVs....

QUICK UPDATE: The new GT web player update also got a false positive from Avira. So in other words, no changes.

As long as you tell it to ignore the game files, you shouldn't have any issues.

I use Avira and I don't.

The same thing started happening with the Avast! free edition. It was giving me false positives for Spybot (I uninstalled since it is a system hog) and then Gametap. Figured it was Avast. I tried the ESET Security 4 free trial and there was no infections on my PC. The only dilemma now is whether to go back to Norton or to check out ESE. Any thoughts?

Sticky230 wrote: The same thing started happening with the Avast! free edition. It was giving me false positives for Spybot (I uninstalled since it is a system hog) and then Gametap. Figured it was Avast. I tried the ESET Security 4 free trial and there was no infections on my PC. The only dilemma now is whether to go back to Norton or to check out ESE. Any thoughts?

Stay away from Norton like the plague!

Eset is good, so is Kaspersky. If your really interested in comparing AV products I would suggest checking out AV-Comparatives (http://www.av-comparatives.org/). They put together some good research on many of the different products available. In fact the latest report gave somewhat low marks to Avira because of the high rate of false positives.

Also, for anyone interested in FREE (who isn't) give Microsoft Security Essentials a try. It actually does a good job and is rather lightweight too. http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/

This free advice comes to you from someone who maintains the networks for dozens of companies for a living

Capt_Electron wrote: Stay away from Norton like the plague!

I'll second that motion, Norton stinks and it's notoriously difficult to completely remove from your system.

Sweet. thanks for the info and the links!

I've found AVG to work pretty well. if i'm not mistaken, there is a free version and a non-free version. Free has done me fine.

that might explain why it wont let me download gametap I have norton

pex7777 wrote: that might explain why it wont let me download gametap I have norton

You have my sympathies. I used to use Norton as well. Now I use Microsoft Security Essentials. Totally free, totally rocks!

If you're got the money for it bitDefeender is a very good AV, and it has no problems wiht gametap, except the occasional asking for internet acess wich simply needs a click and you're done.

UPDATE: Microsoft Security Essentials (MSSE) has no false positives relating to GT. Just did a full scan yesterday and GT's files raised no concern.

ESET Nod32 has no issues with GameTap (or anything else really). Nor does asquared Anti-Malware. PC Tools ThreatFire also plays nice.

subsider34 wrote: ESET Nod32 has no issues with GameTap (or anything else really). Nor does asquared Anti-Malware. PC Tools ThreatFire also plays nice.

Thanks subsider34, I'll update my first post soon! Just to be sure, did you disable or lower heuristics on any of these? (I'm assuming GT isn't added to "excluded files" or something like that?)

shawnasativa wrote: subsider34 wrote: ESET Nod32 has no issues with GameTap (or anything else really). Nor does asquared Anti-Malware. PC Tools ThreatFire also plays nice. Thanks subsider34, I'll update my first post soon! Just to be sure, did you disable or lower heuristics on any of these? (I'm assuming GT isn't added to "excluded files" or something like that?)

There are no exclusions for GameTap in any of these programs nor have I lowered or disabled heuristics. In fact, Nod32 is fine even when set to "Advanced Heuristics" mode.

First post updated!

AVG has pinged two false positives on GT since Ive been running it (the entire time Ive had my account) and both are on games that didn't end up working on my computer anyway.

AVG has been running good for me on my end, and I use the free version.

FyrewolfSeahawk wrote: AVG has pinged two false positives on GT since Ive been running it (the entire time Ive had my account) and both are on games that didn't end up working on my computer anyway. AVG has been running good for me on my end, and I use the free version.

Haha, at least it didn't break the games you could play! Are you sure it wasn't the detections that caused them to stop working? Anyway, thanks for the info.


PS: 1st post updated again.

I guess it depends on the games you're downloading. I use AVG free as well and it's never raised any alarms about GT in all of my weekly scans for the life of my account (2+ years now).

NinjaPirate119 wrote: I guess it depends on the games you're downloading. I use AVG free as well and it's never raised any alarms about GT in all of my weekly scans for the life of my account (2+ years now).

I can't say anything about AVG cause I've never used it with GT. You're right in that many malware programs are triggered by some of GT's catalog, but not all. Avira only had 1 false positive game out of about 20.

NinjaPirate119 wrote: I use AVG free as well and it's never raised any alarms about GT in all of my weekly scans for the life of my account (2+ years now).

I can second this.

A bit of new info added.

On further testing it seems that, while PC Tools Threatfire does not interfere with GameTap, it often interferes with individual games. My hypothesis is that the behavioral scanning slows access to resources, messing up the timing in games. I now recommend that anyone with this software "Suspend" it while playing games or doing other CPU intensive operations (such as watching a movie on Blue-Ray).