Unity 5.2.x exe being stopped by Avast! antivirus on Windows

hi,

we have had a number of reports of our game not launching on Windows when Avast! antivirus is running. Unfortunately there are no popups or logs that indicate what part of the app or modules are causing the problem and the exe just gets stopped, leaving zombie processes running in the background in its wake.

We are just building a standalone app using the standard 'build player for Windows' export (both 32 and 64bit) from OS X - there are no native plugins apart from the Steam dll's and nothing exotic that might cause problems. Even testing basic skeleton apps without any assets, code, or plugins sees the standalone app get instantly stopped without any further information.

Is anyone else having problems with Avast! falsely flagging their Windows apps? If so, are there any workarounds? Is this something that Unity can assist with to ensure their player executables aren't falsely flagged or does each developer's binary need to be individually whitelisted by Avast and other vendors?

cheers,

// greg

 

An update (and thread bump): Avast cannot tell us which part of the application is causing the problem. They've suggested that the player executable could be triggering their protection and that digitally signing the Unity player executable might help. In the meantime we're submitting our builds manually for whitelisting by them.

Has anyone else experienced problems with Avast blocking their standalone Unity 5.2.x+ Windows apps? Are you digitally signing the player executable?

Thanks for any info or tips.

 

Yes, this is happening to me. There are a few other threads available describing the same thing. One of them talked about Avast - once I turned it off, it unblocked the exe and it could continue loading. Game built using 5.3.3f1... Will need to figure out a real solution for this...

 

All we've found so far is submitting it to them for whitelisting which is a bit cumbersome for every version. They still haven't said exactly what's causing the problem but just generally suggested digitally signing the executable. Obviously the catch with this is that a certificate issued from one of the popular authorities can cost a fair amount of money and Avast could not say whether it would make any difference at all.