Other Games It is best to currently NOT play this game.

The title is saying "Do not play this game". By this I mean that you should not play a certain fan game until it is safe to.

This fan game is called "Sonic Gather Battle". The game itself is pretty good to play. However, there is a DRM inside of the game. It can possibly be triggered at any given command.
The DRM will mostly trigger if the game has caught a player searching for "cheats", "hacks", or "mod" to the game on the internet explorer used or the program called or related to "Cheat Engine". If you try to stop the DRM while the game is running, it will be impossible and your game will be locked out. Once activated, the virus will be undetectable by some Antivirus software. If you use AVG, it will not detect the virus. I have accidentally experienced this before for myself. I do not want others to fall in the same place.

The game will possibly send the developer personal info, IP address, Internet History, File Info, and PC Info. The info may also be placed on the cloud afterwards. It will also block you from playing the game.

The maker of the game (claims not to be) has not really shown any type of care for this situation people have fallen victim to even though this would be counted as Illegal.

EDIT: He took down his post to prevent anyone from seeing what he said. Here is what his post was.

Better details given by LJSTAR on Discord:


A video demonstrating this DRM ingame is given by Sina:


There are many types of videos on youtube talking about the same situation.

Other links that provide information on the situation:
http://sonicfangameshq.com/SGB.txt (will update at times)
https://www.reddit.com/r/SonicTheHe..._fangame_sonic_gather_battle_has_a_malicious/

These two links will provide what will be executed during the DRM activation:
https://pastebin.com/fzHFsSsD
https://pastebin.com/T07nCABx

To make sure others do not fall victim to this trojan, People who found out this have been spreading around the web to let those know what can happen once you download the game. I do not want to let you be the next person to experience this. Please do your best to avoid any type of download of the game.

Thank you for reading.

 

Okay, so I've heard about bad DRM like denuvo before, but this one is MILES worse (and completely illegal).
If Sega were to take down a fan game right now, it should definitely be this piece of crap.

 

Not quite *that* bad, the game is looking for the titles of the Web browser windows, since most modern browsers put the title of the site into the browser window, that's how it finds it. The game doesn't know what sites your are visiting per se, only the titles.


Edit: just realised you had these in the main post, rip
Anyway, here's a reddit thread about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/SonicTheHe..._fangame_sonic_gather_battle_has_a_malicious/ and a handy text thingie which sums it up pretty well along with a person claiming to be the dev's responses: http://www.sonicfangameshq.com/SGB.txt

 

This may be true but still, there are those who do not have these kinds of browsers. Causing the game to close the web explorer by force.
The developer may try to work a way around for new types of modern browsers.

 

From what I read, it would only close the browser when certain words appeared in the window name, if someone didn't have a browser that did this they wouldn't be affected. But this is still kinda creepy and invasive.

 

I am unsure the results would differ if their browser was different but in majority, you are correct Picks.

Unfortunately, there were also bugs in game that can leave someone affected. Along with having CE for any reason. I don't know why the developer had made this happen or what was on his mind with this action, but I do believe it is a huge invasion of privacy and should not happen again.

 

That's what you get for playing Sonic