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Windows Smartscreen - Unknown Publisher

A topic by Night Owl Gaming LLC created Mar 10, 2020 Views: 1,188 Replies: 4

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So I've recently been putting the finishing touches on an alpha test I'd like to bring to itch. However I tested it out first uploading to my own website and then downloading the zip. When I go to run the game I get the Windows SmartScreen - Unknown Publisher popup. I don't know much about how certificate authorities work - but this obviously seems like something that will discourage people from trying out the game. I think from what I've read that a version uploaded with Butler and downloaded through the itch client will be signed by itch and thus no popup... but any version of the game that is just a zip file will have these errors yes? Is this something I should worry about, how would I even go about getting my Unreal exports to be signed anyway?

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MashPatch4 years ago

I'm having the same issue and unfortunately don't have an answer but i'd like to get more info on this as well.

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Evolutionary Games4 years ago(+4)

Windows will show that popup on any software that isn't popular or isn't known. They will also show that on updates of software that previously had enough downloads. This is all software, games included, that are installed via Windows.

There isn't anything you can do about it. Once enough people download it, that will go away - it might never go away in the case of most games on itch.io

People who play games from itch.io and other indie sites are used to seeing that banner and will ignore it.

If you install something through a game console - like itch.io app - then it bypasses this and you don't get a warning because the app is installing the game, not Windows installer.

However, I have never seen that pop-up installing my own game that was built on my own machine. I did change a setting at some stage to state that I'm a developer in Windows and on my anti-virus - there was a setting that said don't check executables that were built on this machine.