Hey everyone.

A couple of days ago I made a post that shows concerns that my game may have malware in it. At first, I thought it was standard Clickteam bugging out, but the issue is possibly worse than that.

To give people a quick rundown:

I use Clickteam Fusion 2.5 to program this game. Clickteam and the Windows Operating System do not always have a friendly relationship with each other. You see this all the time with FNaF fangames specifically.

Windows ALWAYS flags any .exe game file exported from Clickteam as a virus. 100% of the time, however, it is not. I do not fully understand why this is the case, but my guess is that Clickteam is such an outdated system that Windows cannot fully decipher was game is good or bad when it is a game from Clickteam.

I thought that THIS game was going to be the same case. But whenever I actually decided to export The Emerald Butterfly from Clickteam, immediately my anti-virus software (I use Avast One) said it was a "Win32:Malware-gen" and sent it away to quarantine so it does not let a virus mess up my computer.

If an anti-virus software flags a file as "Win32:Malware-gen", it means the file is suspicious and COULD contain malware, although it is not a guarantee. This will then send it to quarantine, which is basically solitary confinement for suspicious files

Whenever I have downloaded other FNaF fangames from Game Jolt under the same coding engine, it has NEVER flagged any game as that kind of weird suspicious file that gets sent straight to quarantine, never. Sure, Windows will say "Are you sure you want to play this? This kind of file is not recognized" but it NEVER states that it is a virus right away, and for my anti-virus software, typically loading up a FNaF fangame made in Clickteam will result in the software scanning the application for any malicious malware. 99% of the time it is a false positive and is completely safe.

With The Emerald Butterfly, however, even when I export the game, it is a Win32:Malware-gen error. If someone tries to download it, it is a Win32:Malware-gen error. And if someone tries to PLAY the game, guess what, it is a Win32:Malware-gen error. And keep in mind, everytime it is flagged as a Win32:Malware-gen error, it gets sent straight away.

But this is the thing, going back to the discussion of first exporting the game from Clickteam, whenever I try to export ANY of my game files including The Emerald Butterfly, it flags it as a Win32:Malware-gen error.

I did one final experiment to see if maybe my laptop was just being dumb. I downloaded Five Nights at Coso's PLUS and The Emerald Butterfly and opened them separately to see if this was a genuine issue on my brother's laptop. Coso's ran perfectly fine, Emerald Butterfly was deemed suspicious and sent away.

I am stumped. Maybe I'm blowing this WAY out of proportion, and this is easily fixable, but to me, it does not look like it at all. Like I said before, I have never once run into this issue in my almost six years of using Clickteam.

If this cannot be fixed, there are a couple of things that might happen

I will have to switch game engines (to Godot or GameMaker) - 1

This is the most common solution I will have to come by. I would need to learn a new coding engine and input ALL of my assets back into another software.

This would take forever though, especially with how close I am to finishing this game already, it is going to be many more months of game development tacked onto this game.

This would also make me run into other issues as well, like, how am I going to make the Making a FNaF Fangame in Clickteam Fusion series work?

This is one of my only options to keep this game going

Seek professional help - 2

This is the one I'm going to have to do if I can't find internet help. I will need to possibly go to tech places/companies to ask professionals for help, like with the Geek Squad over at a Best Buy or something.

They could possibly get rid of the issue, possibly

Cancel the game - 3

If all else fails, the game straight up will be canceled. 1 year of progress will thrown down the drain

I really do not want to cancel this game.

But I refuse to release a game that COULD POTENTIALLY be an actual virus, I will not scare my audience like that.

It's either this game is fully rid of a problem, or there's going to be no game at all. I will not put ANY of you at risk like that.

So, that is the kind of scenario I'm in

I REALLY need help. If any of you know how you can help me, please, ANY input helps.

I will keep searching for answers on how to fix this issue.

Thank you.

No further development on this game will happen until this issue is resolved