Stardew Valley.exe has a virus detected by antivirus

[Zensnowfall]

Hello! So today, I started to boot up Stardew but it was denied by my antivirus, moved into quarantine and then spat out this reasoning: Gen:Suspicious.Cloud.2.iC0@a0SFlko was the virus it claims is infecting the .exe. I have *never* had this issue before, and I uninstalled and deep-cleaned my PC just to ensure it was not a problem on my end. Re-installed, and the same error process occurred.

Has anyone else had this issue? Is the antivirus just freaking out? Or is the download somehow compromised? Any help/advice would be appreciated.

[Bumpster]

Having read your op, I just downloaded Stardew Valley with no warnings from my antivirus software. I then scanned the exe file itself which passed muster. I run Norton 360. I hope this helps. I bought the game off of Steam if that has anything to do with anything several years ago.

[Amberbaum]

What kind of over-paranoid AV do you have, OP?

[JonWoo]

Originally posted by Amberbaum:

What kind of over-paranoid AV do you have, OP?

It's gotta be bad if it flagged it and Norton didn't.

[Amberbaum]

Originally posted by Jonwoo89:

Originally posted by Amberbaum:

What kind of over-paranoid AV do you have, OP?

It's gotta be bad if it flagged it and Norton didn't.

Prolly something sold to businesses.

[Zensnowfall]

I use BitDefender Antivirus for those inquiring. Like I said, it is something I have never encountered before, so was mystified.
Did some googling around and apparently it is a program some companies use to track usage of their products as a form of anti-piracy? Also not the first time the .exe had been flagged by other antiviruses.
All so bizarre.
Who knew crop growing was so valuable it was worth adding in extras to prevent piracy?

[Dimensional Traveler]

Originally posted by Zensnowfall:

I use BitDefender Antivirus for those inquiring. Like I said, it is something I have never encountered before, so was mystified.
Did some googling around and apparently it is a program some companies use to track usage of their products as a form of anti-piracy?

That's not an anti-virus or security software, that's malware. I would immediately remove any such software from my system.

Also not the first time the .exe had been flagged by other antiviruses.
All so bizarre.
Who knew crop growing was so valuable it was worth adding in extras to prevent piracy?

Unless you are running a pirated copy of the game I don't see why it would flag the executable as infected. It sounds like the only infection is the "antivirus" software itself.

[synthiful]

i would get rid of it, windows defender is already good enough

[JonWoo]

Originally posted by Dimensional Traveler:

Originally posted by Zensnowfall:

I use BitDefender Antivirus for those inquiring. Like I said, it is something I have never encountered before, so was mystified.
Did some googling around and apparently it is a program some companies use to track usage of their products as a form of anti-piracy?

That's not an anti-virus or security software, that's malware. I would immediately remove any such software from my system.

What's wrong with BitDefender? I've always heard it's one of the best out there, albeit a bit prone to being overprotective with false positives.

[TamanduaGirl]

Steam actually tells you to not have antivirus on while playing their games because they check the files they host and problems like this will happen. There was a huge uproar recently in the Binding of Isaac discussion area from this issue and people not understanding that it was their windows defender being stupid and not a game issue. There's no viruses in Steam games but antivirus can get confused and think encrypted game files are viruses or get mad at the games trying to write to their saves. Your antivirus can break your game if it quarantines or deletes the "suspicious" file.

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/5F3D-1477-AFF9-C4F3

[Zensnowfall]

That pretty much answered my question; just the antivirus derping then. Thanks!

[Dimensional Traveler]

Originally posted by Jonwoo89:

Originally posted by Dimensional Traveler:

That's not an anti-virus or security software, that's malware. I would immediately remove any such software from my system.

What's wrong with BitDefender? I've always heard it's one of the best out there, albeit a bit prone to being overprotective with false positives.

My issue with that is BitDefender reporting on activity on my computer to a third party that I did not authorize. That is pretty much one of the definitions of malware.