This is why you use https://virustotal.com/ to check the EXEs and DLLs before you launch the game.

If it was a real virus, it wouldn’t have to open a cmd window to do its thing.

That could just be a patch routine to apply a crack, right?

You just need to use trusted sources for your piracy and this will never happen. The rentry megathread is one of the best, but there’s also fmhy. Both will tell you of the best sites to find your games.

I had to help a buddy pick up the pieces after he ran a pirated game which had, unbeknown to him, been bundled with an infostealer.

He saw a momentary CMD window too.

A couple of minutes after he ran the game, the infostealer had vacuumed up all his credentials saved in his web browser including the session token for Microsoft.

The actor behind it took control of his MS account and removed the account recovery settings he’d set (since with the session token, they didn’t even need to authenticate). Lost his email, cloud backups, Xbox everything, etc.

Microsoft weren’t much help but they did transfer his Xbox profile. Everything else, they wouldn’t help with.

Don’t run software you don’t trust, kids. At the very least run it in a sandbox or something and scan the files it unpacks with a security product or three.

Hey! My assigned win 11 work PC does that all the time!

Is this always a virus? I used to have it a lot on my old computer 😅😅😅