Hi Guys,

Someone posed this question to me today. "How do I stop the protect message from popping up on my game, when run on other PC's?"

I thought "Good question".

How does one stop this from happening? Is there somewhere you can get your application certified (or something)?

Interested to hear your thoughts on this.

Thanks in advance

Google to the rescue.

https://www.howtogeek.com/75356/how-to-turn-off-or-disable-the-smartscreen-filter-in-windows-8/

Check the "Off" option.

Doesn't really answer the question (and yes I did google it).

So, you make a block-buster game, gets 50,000,000 downloads, and you have to advise each one of the 50,000,000 people to turn off their windows security?

So there is no 'governing body' who can flag your exe as being safe?

You will need to sign your installers and executables.  See also: How do I change "Verified Publisher: Unknown" to "Verified Publisher: [My Name Goes Here]" in the UAC popup.

Nice @fastcall22 Exactly what I was looking for

Then he will need to sign the executable with a certificate from a certificate authority like Verisign (Alt. see https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/38117.microsoft-trusted-root-certificate-program-participants-as-of-june-27-2017.aspx#C), even then the user may still get the smart screen block if the user base is small, where the extended validation certificate will clear that.

Ummm ... how about dismissing Windows 10 to stop that insanity?

1 hour ago, Shaarigan said:

how about dismissing Windows 10 to stop that insanity?

It is not really when you consider the typical user out there.  In fact, it is a very good behavior for the billions of people who aren't software developers.

Most people only run a small number of programs. Those programs have many installs. The programs are easily identified by fingerprint and can be trivially whitelisted. It is rare for most people to run the unsigned executables that have no other users, no known fingerprints, and yet require extensive system integration like games have.  For most people when they encounter the situation it truly is a software threat.

That doesn't mean the dialog isn't bothersome, but when you look at the billions of people globally who use Windows, and you look at the thousands of game developers globally who are bothered by the dialog, the attempt to save them from themselves is quite sane and rational.

Bypassing the warning is easy enough, requiring two clicks. People who are running games made by individuals are the same people who are technically savvy enough to push the 'more info' button and the 'proceed' button. And if your software triggers the alert and you really are releasing it to the public, it is quite easy to satisfy the requirements to get whitelisted.