My game is blocked by antivirus. What’s going on?

#gamedev #help #security

You finally ship your game.

You’ve spent months building it, fixing weird bugs at 2 a.m., tweaking controls that only you seem to notice, and convincing yourself it’s “good enough” to share. You zip it up, send it to a friend, and wait for that first real reaction.

Then they message you back.

“Uh… Windows says this might be unsafe.”
Or worse: “My antivirus deleted it.”

At that moment, everything feels a little unfair. You didn’t download anything sketchy, you didn’t copy code from shady forums, and you definitely didn’t write malware. So why is your game being treated like one?

Let’s clear that up.

Why antivirus software flags indie games so often

The important thing to understand is that modern antivirus software is not just looking for viruses anymore. That approach stopped working once malware started changing faster than signature databases could keep up.

Instead, antivirus tools now focus on risk assessment, and your game often ends up looking risky even when it’s completely harmless.

This usually comes down to one simple problem: your game is unknown.

A brand-new executable made by a developer nobody has heard of, downloaded from a random link, with no prior install history, checks a lot of boxes that security systems associate with danger. Not because it is dangerous, but because it could be.

From the antivirus perspective, it’s better to block a few innocent apps than to let one real threat through.

How modern antivirus actually works

Most antivirus solutions today use a combination of techniques rather than relying on a single check.

They still use signature-based detection, which looks for known malware patterns, but that’s only one piece of the puzzle now.

More important are heuristics and behavior analysis, where the antivirus watches what your program tries to do. Creating files, accessing memory, spawning processes, or talking to the network can all raise flags if the behavior matches common malware patterns. Games do some of these things too, which doesn’t help.

On top of that, there’s reputation-based analysis, which is where many indie games get stuck. If very few people have downloaded or run your executable, the system has no trust history to rely on. Unknown files are treated cautiously by default.

Most of this happens with help from cloud services, where hashes of files are checked against massive databases in real time. If your game is rare, the system simply doesn’t have enough data to feel comfortable.

Windows 11 tightened the rules

Windows 11 made these systems more visible and, in some cases, more aggressive.

Features like Microsoft Defender SmartScreen warn users when they try to run apps with little or no reputation, especially if those apps aren’t signed. Newer protections like Smart App Control take this even further by blocking or warning about apps that don’t meet certain trust criteria.

The intent here isn’t to punish small developers. The goal is to protect users who don’t know how to evaluate software safety on their own.

Unfortunately, that means indie games often get caught in the middle.

Why unsigned apps look especially suspicious

When your game isn’t digitally signed, Windows has no reliable way to tell who created it or whether it has been modified since it was built. From the system’s point of view, the file could have been altered after compilation or bundled with something harmful.

A code signature doesn’t guarantee that your app is safe, but it does provide identity and integrity. It tells Windows, “This file came from this publisher, and it hasn’t changed since it was signed.”

Without that information, Windows treats the executable as an unknown quantity, and unknown quantities get warnings.

How code signing helps over time

Code signing is not an instant fix, and that part surprises a lot of developers.

Signing your game helps because it allows reputation to accumulate. As more users download, install, and run your signed executable without problems, Windows and antivirus systems gradually become more confident that it’s safe.

Over time, warnings show up less often. False positives become rarer. Install flows feel smoother.

It’s slow, and it can be frustrating, but it’s the system working as designed.

How you actually gain trust as a developer

There’s no shortcut here, but there are practical steps that make a real difference.

Signing your game is the biggest one. Even a basic code signing certificate gives Windows something consistent to latch onto. Keeping your distribution stable helps too, since constantly changing file names or publishers resets reputation.

Avoid behaviors that look suspicious unless you truly need them, and when antivirus software does get it wrong, submit false positive reports. Vendors do respond to those reports, especially over time.

It also helps to be honest with your players. Explaining why a warning might appear builds trust far better than pretending it’s nothing.

The uncomfortable but honest truth

Windows security is designed for the average user, not for small, unknown developers releasing their first game. That’s frustrating, but it’s also understandable.

Once you know how the system thinks, the warnings stop feeling personal or random. Your game isn’t bad. It’s just new.

And new software always has to earn trust the hard way.

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