ArcheAge hides a virus?

[Soren Lily]

I've seen many adds for this game even outside of steam so I finally checked it out. I had heard it was very Pay2Win but I was still willing to give it a fair chance. I figured I could still get several hours of fun out of it before the Pay2Win aspect kicked in. Now I'm VERY glad I read a few more steam reviews before hitting that download button. Apparantly people have found that downloading this game includes a rootkit virus named "HackShieldPro" or something like that. Considering how many reviews I saw that mentioned this virus I'm pretty sure it's true. If it is, I feel that steam should remove this game from the market. There's a lot of disgusting developer behaviours that can be excused: Pay2Win, not dealing with bots, going back on numerous promises, etc, but downloading a virus on user's computers?

What do you think, should steam remove this game?

[The Sleepless]

its not a really virus its apart the anti-hack program Hackshield from what many companys have said oit doesnt harm your PC

[neoVictrix]

Hackshield isn't a virus or rootkit - it's an anti-cheat software that's about as dangerous as VAC, Wellbia's XIGNCODE3, Blizzard's Warden, Punkbuster, Easy Anti-Cheat, and so on.

Hackshield just happens to be an old anti-cheat that scans for cheats the "old way" - by scanning files and filepaths for known injections and such. A number of games use the software, and a lot of people know that it's honestly a poor choice for an anti-cheat software.

Just like with the other games it comes with, it's easy to uninstall (gets uninstalled with the game) and easy to remove any left behind files during the uninstallation process (because just with any other program there's some registry files that get left behind, unless you use something like Revo Uninstaller to uninstall your programs).

TL;DR - people have their tin foil hats on too tight, but it's a terrible anti-cheat software that's fairly easy for those that know how to bypass it.

[Shmoof]

^
Tbh this looks more like a Virus than Hackshield. If somebody plays games I think he/she knows how to remove an unwanted program.

[m0zone]

its been in with 100s of mmos from phansty staronline to a bunch of ubsoft games etc

no issues bunch of IT IS A VIRUS OMGZ if its a issue for you dont play wow it has one hidden that runs at all times not just when game is on and half life runs VAC when your in game that scans files and such on your computer and reports home rust now has one also

[neoVictrix]

Originally posted by -hg- Hydranix:

HackShield may potentially harm your machine. It installs a kernel mode driver on your machine that could contain exploitable security flaws. I've written a tool to remove it.

HSR.exe (Hack Shield Remover)

Written in AutoIt, so ignore anti-virtus scans which flag the exe.

Yeah... no.

Remember that rule about downloading things from random people on the internet? Never a good idea to do so (besides, the game isn't going to run unless you have the anti-cheat installed).

Really the only thing you need to do to ensure everything is uninstalled (if you're that paranoid about it) is by using Revo Uninstaller (which is freeware) or by manually removing the registry file associated with the program. This is done by doing the following:

Start > search for regedit > HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ and deleting that EagleX64 registry folder. Again, only recommended to do this if you have games that make use of Hackshield uninstalled. Also, unless you know what you're doing, its usually never a good idea to mess around with registry files.

[Seaspite]

neoVictrix is right. Just remove it editing the registry. With that said, Hackshield is crap and it often does not uninstall with a Glyph uninstall. It isn't a virus but it isn't going to eliminate anything. It is ancient anti-exploit software easily bypassed at this point; junk installed on your PC by Trion....

Don't take my word for it, play Archeage. It is a bot-ridden piece of junk. The FTP model isn't and the exploits are just rampant...Not worth your time..

[Balmung]

AA is one big Virus called MMORPG that could ruin you the Genre for ever. ;)