Error: Norton says Chuhou Joutai or another Drillimation product is unsafe

Problem: You try to launch Chuhou Joutai or another Drillimation product and Norton flags it as unsafe and deletes the .exe file for it.

Solution

Very rarely, Symantec, the makers of Norton and other anti-virus software, sends users a very alarming message suggesting a particular Drillimation product is “unsafe”, suggesting it is dangerous or guilty of malware. Norton then prevents you from playing the game by deleting the .exe file. There are many different variants of the message, and it may look similar to this:

Do not forget the staff at Drillimation use Norton too. After extensive testing to investigate our claims, we always find this is a false positive, and there is no cause for genuine concern. Norton works by using a massive list of programs they send from their data warehouse to an individual copy of Norton. And they’re aggressively conserving the blacklist when it comes to new programs created by developers. Very rarely, one of our games will falsely trip that alarm, producing the aforementioned warning.

The biggest issue for you isn’t just what the warning says, it prevents you from playing the game too!

Luckily, we’ve dealt with a few resources you can rely on:

• Report the issue yourself (usually takes 1 – 3 minutes to complete)
• Report the issue to Drillimation and let us deal with Symantec

To get the best results, please include a screenshot of the Norton message you received. Screenshots can help Symantec resolve the situation faster. Please note this may take 1 to 3 business days for them to fulfill your report, so be patient.

FAQ

Have you considered codesigning the executable before release?
We have not considered doing a codesign process for every product, partly because it’s not cheap and easy. Firstly, we would have to follow the signing entities’ process for wrapping the game with their signing setup before release. This process varies by provider. While this route stops Norton from showing the message to new players, we would have to do this every time a new version is released.