Background: Lucy: The Eternity She Wished For is a visual novel available through STEAM .
In the first instance, upon a full-system scan, N360 picked up on that Lucy.exe contained threat: Heur.AdvML.B. After seeing that, I had let the issue go for awhile, but then decided to post the topic to a STEAM community page dedicated to the game to see if others had encountered a similar situation. A person using Kaspersky reported that the executable was not flagged. The developer responded to me explaining that they have tested their files against multiple scanners including Microsoft Security Essentials and that it had not been a problem. However, users in the STEAM community that employed Norton products had encountered what I had, a heuristically-based detection. From my understanding, this is a generic detection utilized to "net" possible various incarnations of maliciousness.
In the second instance, I decided to re-visit this issue. I re-acquired the exe for the application, however, a noticeable change, Norton 360 quenched the download outright. That did not happen the last time; it was only upon a full-system scan that this possible threat was even detected. Interesting.... According to my Norton 360 program, Lucy.exe has been submitted for evaluation, but, to be sure, I decided to submit this exe myself utilizing a link venerated user Floplot provided some time back evidenced here: https://community.norton.com/en/forums/how-submit-suspicious-file-checking I had submitted various files in the past, but hadn't been doing this in some time and lost track of the link to the submission form, so, thanks Floplot! :-) I submitted the Lucy.exe that was still in my quarantine from the first instance, making exclusions for it as well. I can, always change that.
What is troubling about this situation is that I have other STEAM applications which do NOT get flagged by N360 as this one did, which might lend more weight to it being problematic. Then again, as I think of it, there might have been some others that alerted N360, but I just created exclusions.... One that comes to mind is shangui.exe. Maybe I should stop making exclusions and submit the others as well.... Who knows? Maybe some of them aren't flagged because Norton's definitions are not aware of them yet, but they might still be a problem, or, maybe they are really safe. To have a more definitive answer on this, I'm glad I've taken the time to submit Lucy.exe (directly) using the submission form. Hopefully, I will receive a response to my e-mail soon (thumbs up/ down) so I can then report back to the STEAM community authoritatively.
You could say, "Why post this here?" You never know. There might be some STEAM gamers here and in case they are confronting this as well, figured I'd share my experience. Another aspect is maybe that these developers on STEAM are creating new games with new executables so rapidly (and of course they will not be familiar), hence, Norton is such an over-arching program that it will flag "wild" detections and this sort of annoying situation will undoubtedly occur. Maybe a possible solution is somewhat of an alliance between Valve and Symantec where what indie developers are creating can be added to a Norton database so it doesn't look like a new exe is completely coming from "left field" (so to speak). Of course everything will still be scanned, but, maybe this idea can possibly reduce the number of false-positive detections with respect to STEAM games? Just a thought.
Overall, I'm a little saddened. Putting aside the fact that I paid for this game, this title reminded me so much of beloved Chobits, that I couldn't wait to play it when all this went down. Hopefully, this will just be a false-positive and I will finally be able to enjoy this title.
Regards,
H.B.
Musical Selection- Kotoko: Being:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZNjSBgSWW0