Buddy, this is a new thing and happens more often than you think. It’s not even an obscure type of attack. Instead of accusing me of spreading FUD, you could just
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Software dependencies go really deep. It’s not realistic to be aware of every bit of code that you end up shipping. The least you can and should do, is to be aware of the stuff a level above. And maybe test it in a couple of different machines, as your own PC maybe compromised. I don’t understand why pointing out this, which may hurt people is such a big problem.
False positives are a big problem. It's fine when your AV software is aware of the potential of false positives and gives you a chance to search for additional information regarding this "threat," or better yet, look it up on its own, and let you choose whether or not you want to launch that executable, but it becomes an issue when it's big bold red letters and you can't do anything.
In my case, defender specifically pointed out the severe threat - Ymacco Trojan - in the exe. So it stands to reason that something fishy happened while building the game. And I have the 64bit version as well.
"Something fishy happened while building the game."
No.
As I said, it's going to happen on a clean installation when building Python and RenPy from source and compiling either of the two included tutorials into a standalone game.
Nobody answered the most pertinent question:
Where does that virus come from?
1. If it was a virus somewhere deep in the compiler, everyone would be affected, it would essentially doom humanity.
2. If it was malicious code in Python source, a lot more important software would be affected.
3. If it was malicious code in RenPy source, it would affect both 32 bit and 64 bit versions.
4. If it was malicious code in some game, it would affect both 32 bit and 64 bit versions and other games would be unaffected.
The explanation is simple: RenPy executables are essentially scripts compiled to binary which launch a Python interpreter environment for RenPy. They're largely identical for all games, so a virus with an internal structure similar to a RenPy 32 bit executable will cause AV software to flag all those files as suspect.
It's a wider issue. AV software is way too sensitive these days and a lot of false positives is sleazy advertising relying on scare tactics to a) there are a lot of threats out there; b) show that your antivirus is protecting you; c) you're not safe without antivirus. And a lot of people fall for it. It's a self-perpetuating lie.
What next? Somebody creates a virus with a structure similar to explorer.exe and AV software breaks your Windows installation over it? Of course not, AV is designed to be very careful with false positives concerning critical system files. But any third party software is fair game.