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My youngest wants to download and install Battle of the Immortals from Perfect World.

I was suspicious straight away as it was installing games like this that caused problems on the kid's computer earlier this year - strange browser toolbars and the like being the most obvious ones. We've since reinstalled Windows and I'd like to keep the machine clean.

I've found a forum thread here that claims the game contains a trojan, but it's couched in language that makes me think of conspiracy theorists and doesn't offer any hard evidence. Also as Lee points out in his comment there isn't going to be any out-and-out malware in there. It's more the "extra" toolbars etc. that I'm sure will be included in the install that I'm worried about.

I'd like to be sure that I'm not going to let him install anything nasty onto their computer. I can obviously scan the exe before I run it, but that won't tell me if it installs any browser plugins etc. What else can I, and should I, check?

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    Your first link doesn't appear to claim the game is a trojan; it seems to be talking about a third party cheating program. The game's publisher is listed on the NASDAQ and worth over a billion dollars. I think that's reason enough to believe they won't include outright malware.
    – sequentiallee
    Commented Sep 11, 2010 at 20:43
  • @Lee - OK - my mistake, I'll remove that link.
    – ChrisF
    Commented Sep 11, 2010 at 20:49
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    A side point - always go with the "advanced" or "custom" install. If a program wants to install toolbars or other such garbage, you'll have a choice to decline by not using the basic install.
    – Drew
    Commented Sep 12, 2010 at 0:40

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Seeing as there is a large community for that game it's unlikely it's purely a malware. About it containing a trojan - reading the content of this forum thread and this post suggests it's a false positive by a specific security software (or two).

On the other hand, the poster from your provided link was pretty convinced that the game is up to no good.

I don't know the credentials of any of these people; but as the game does look serious and has some players, I doubt it contains a trojan (a back door into your machine). That's just my personal opinion, though. Services like Virustotal can help you see which anti-virus software flags a file as harmful and think for yourself if it looks like a false positive or not.

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  • I saw that post on the BoI forum - I should have included it in the question. The more I read, the more it seems OK, but I'm still wary.
    – ChrisF
    Commented Sep 11, 2010 at 21:39

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