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Download blocks and Windows security

A topic by NPJarcade created 60 days ago Views: 179 Replies: 7
Viewing posts 1 to 4
Submitted

Hi all,

I've been having a blast playing everyone's entries but I've noticed some of the downloadable games are being blocked by Chrome and the exe files require the 'run anyway' button after Windows security stops it from being opened.  This is happening for my entry too.  How do some of you get around this when publishing your games? 

Submitted

its pretty much par for the course on itch. I don't know a solution to this problem but I can say for certain that even frontpage stuff has this issue so don't worry it doesn't reflect badly on you as a dev and wont put people off playing

Submitted

Ah awesome, thanks for the response.  That's good to know.

Submitted

It's just because the executable are unsigned. Generally you can click through (more options or something) and allow it to run or download. While it's probably safe to play things on itch in general, buyer beware! I'd recommend a VM if you can.

Submitted(+2)

The only reliable way to get rid of this is to sign the executable. You need to buy a certificate from a trusted CA and these cost around 200 bucks a year. In the past you could send your executable directly to MS for inspection but that process could take a while. Could be instant or could take weeks. As far as I know Smartscreen will unflag an executable if it had seen it often enough without complain but this can take months if not years.

So the only definite solution is to pay for a code signing certificate and sign the executable. However the certificate MUST be stored on a device with hardware encryption so if you do not own an FIPS certificated device like an HSM you will get an USB token (with shipping costs of course). That is the reason they got so expensive lately.

Submitted(+1)

Thanks for your reply!

That's an expensive solution.  Probably not worth it for game jam games, but thanks a lot, really useful to understand the process.

Submitted

I also had a lot of trouble with the virus detection and the missing signing - but I am wondering - would you need to pay these 200 bucks a year per game or can you use it for multiple programs?

Submitted

During the year you can sign as many of your executables as you can produce. Does not have to be a game, can be used for any kind of desktop application.