higgins,

Hi Higgins, try a different browser. I remeber some community members had issues using certain browsers.

+2 Time Zone __01:09 19/12/2022


Whiterabbit-uk, hi .
In the blue info box I read :
"Windows 10 or newer" .

higgins say :
"Using Windows 7 Pro SP1 last update" .

Maybe , there lies the problem .....

I-M Short, hi .
In the blue info box I read :
"Windows 10 or newer" .

JEDIGEG, sorry .
wrong place for the comment .
It was for Corylea

I-M Short, HEUR refers to a Heuristic Detector. It is not hitting on a known virus, but is looking for what it thinks is "suspicious behaviour". That's how Heuristic Detectors work. You might want to search heuristics on Wikipedia. You'll see that it's an understandable attempt to detect brand new viruses as soon as they are introduced, but that's such a hit or miss proposition that false positives are common. In fact, if you go looking on the Avast site (btw, I'm using Avast myself), you likely won't find a full - or any - description of what that virus is, what damage it does, when it was discovered, and so forth, because it's almost certainly a false positive.

As Whiterabbit said above, as a conscientious (he's a volunteer) doublecheck, he submits the games to Virus Total. That site runs programs through 60-70 online scans by all the major anti-virus companies, including Avast.

Usually, he gets no hits, sometimes 1 or 2, which are overly aggressive heuristic false positives. The way these giveaways work, the games are given from sites that have both free and commercial games: Toomky Games, MyPlayCity, Falcoware. To offset their costs for the free games, they insert advertising when you download the game from them. You might want to check those sites out or at least their reputations, so you know these sources are legitimate. In fact, the ones given away here have most of that advertising stripped out to make them a better deal for this site. Once in awhile some of these will show you a quick plug for another game when they're loading, but the main, and often only, thing they do is open your default browser to their site when you finish playing so you can see their wares, as Whiterabbit also mentioned. This is probably what Avast is hitting on, in your case. But they won't hijack your browser. Your homepage will stay the same, you won't see any ads from those sites while you're surfing, the only time you'll see anything from them on your browser is after you finish a session playing their game. That's how they pay a lot of the bills, and how this site gets them to give free games.

This site has been in business since the mid 2000s, I have been downloading games from here for more than 10 years, and not a single virus yet. If these games were full of malware, the site would have been looooong gone. I encourage you to check out heuristics, look that IDP.HEUR.26 up and see that it's not a recognized virus, check out the reputation of those game sites, and this site's reputation, and I'm sure you will realize that's a false positive. All that you need to do is create an exception for it in Avast, if you so choose, so you can download. I hope you'll come back, and give the site another chance, or continue to come if you're a regular.

mediaman(watcher)13,

Thank you for your excellent feedback mediaman 13, your explanation is much better than the one I usually give; though I've not posted full details of the free sites giveaways for a while after trying to cut down on the length of my comments.

Whatever adware is bundled with any game from the big giveaway sites is always confined to the game and never installed to the system that the game has been installed to, so the only time what low level adware is present is active is when you play the game.

Whiterabbit-uk, thanks WR for mentioning an issue I missed. The game giveaways are usually much more freestanding and don't really hook into your Windows like the average installed software does. Another reason folks can breathe easier.

Corylea, hi .
In the blue info box I read :
"Windows 10 or newer" .

JEDIGEG, Oh, thanks! Somehow my eye skipped right over that, so thanks for alerting me to it.

sailorbear510 aka Jason,

Thanks for your feedback Jason. I've only just woken up after many sleepless nights over the last week. Fell asleep watching an old St Trinian's movie on TV early this morning, so only just installed todays game at 6pm. After initially starting the game, I agree with you that this game may contain micro transactions and some of the steam community support this possibility. That doesn't mean the game is unplayable though. It just means progress may be excruciatingly slow once you get well into the game. As I've mentioned previously, a good friend of mine who sadly passed away some time ago, was really into one of these farming games that was free on Facebook a decade ago. You didn't need to spend money on it, but you could speed up your progress by spending real money on in app purchases, some were to give you exclusive buildings or extend various things. He became really hooked on the game until his bank statement arrived three months into the game and he'd spent over $400 on the game. Because each purchase was a much smaller amount, he wasn't keeping track of the purchases and was shocked when he saw his statement.

JB, It defaulted to English for me.