Rod Munch,

"dumped 8 files in my Programs(x86) folder"

Falcoware does that. As WR has explained previously, they make money to pay for the games they offer free when people visit their site.

Rod Munch,

Hi Rod, I posted the following with a small edit last week when someone posed a similar comment. (Also, thanks Mike. I meant to respond to this hours ago, but got side tracked).

Were any security issues caused when you installed today's game? that is apart from opening your browser when you closed the game down and maybe showed an advert for another game while the game was booting up? These are marketing methods and not security issues that have become very common since the financial crisis back in 2008. Over that period and the following couple of years, many game developers went out of business or bankrupt and several large AAA developers also disappeared because the price of games crashed significantly; for example, prior to the crash arcade games cost almost $20 each (i.e. $19.99), by the end of 2008 the average price of an arcade game had dropped to between $4 to $6 and has remained so since, with very little increases in the price. For AAA games, if you discount the most popular such as the Call of Duty, Assassins Creed and other big name Franchise's; most AAA games have in real terms dropped in price as much percentage-wise as their arcade cousins; for example, I was paying £30 for AAA games 25 years ago, whereas I'm still paying about the same or less now and quite often I'll buy them several months after release with as much as 75% to 90% off their release price and sometimes even get them for free (case in point the Epic freebies, of which I've received 80 games for free since December 2018, that usually cost between £10 to £30 each, and some of them have been from the big name franchises for example only last week we got one of the Assassin Creed games and several months ago we got three of the Batman Arkham games that I paid almost £100 for when they were released.) The price of AAA games 20 years ago held their release price for up to a year and afterwards discounts were paltry compared to today.

£30 25 years ago, (taking into account inflation) is more like £120 today. So developers have found various strategies to make their games profitable, one of them is to allow game sites to give their games away for free, but usually included with the games installer is a 'non malicious' adware, that does not affect your system files and is only active when you play the game. The browser opening is so that the developer and distributor can earn money via the adverts on the home page and the in-game advert that plays via the games installer. Other ways developers have been able to survive are the indie game bundles that have become ubiquitous; where you can get up to 95% off their games and also the almost constant sales you'll find on platforms such as Steam, uPlay, Origin and others. For most AAA games, they tend to release a game then release loads of DLC that can increase the games price significantly over time, for example some of the simulation games like Microsoft's Flight Sim X and the Train Sims can all cost many thousands of pounds if you purchased all of their DLC's. The Train simulator 2020 alone has almost 570 DLC's (more added every month) costing on average between £11.99 to £24.99 each.

p.s. I don't mean to preach; just trying to explain why developers have subscribed to such practices. I've installed virtually every Falcoware game given away since they started giving them back in Nov 2018 and have never had any security issues with them. I often scan the files before I install them and usually they do indicate some adware, which as mentioned above the Falcoware installer does contain, but it is not malicious and only serves to earn the developer and distributor some cash in exchange for giving the game away for free.

p.p.s. With respect to the shortcuts and non essential files that are installed into the program folder, they are not malicious and can be deleted if you are bothered. When you choose no to install desktop shortcuts, that is only for the actual game executable shortcut. I do think it should be mentioned that you will got those other shortcuts installed to the desktop; however, they are just that, shortcuts and can be deleted.

Whiterabbit-uk, There is way more to it than just the shortcuts. There is so much garbage in the registry and everywhere else. It is unwanted and the trash was deleted.

Rod Munch,

Hi Rob,

Virtually very action taken on a computer is recorded in the registry.