Antivirus vs. PopCap: A Game of False Positives

A stream of false positives has had game developer PopCap playing leapfrog with security vendors over the past several months. PopCap is the maker of the highly popular Bejeweled, Bookworm, Plants vs. Zombies, Zuma, and dozens of other games. With a billion downloads since 2000, PopCap games are widely distributed and thus the false positives particularly vexing. Initial mis-reports were from AVG, then Avast, followed by BitDefender, Kaspersky, Lavasoft, and ZoneAlarm. Unconfirmed reports suggest that Panda Software and Spybot Search & Destroy have, in the past, been among those who have erroneously alerted on the games.

If you should receive a virus alert on a PopCap game or one of its components, and you are certain that your copy of the PopCap game is legitimate, try adding the detected file to the antivirus scanner's exclusion list. If you aren't certain the file is a legitimate PopCap component, follow the tips outlined in Six Steps to Tell if a Virus Alert is Legitimate. If you do determine it's a false positive, be sure to notify your antivirus vendor so they can fix the problem and spare other users (and PopCap) the aggravation.