Jason Carr

Also, one last thing: we are committed to making sure that new official versions of the software do not trip Microsoft Defender (Windows' built-in anti-virus), because we feel like it's the best solution out there, as it generally doesn't act like the boy who cried wolf, reporting millions of false positives, and for the most part it just works. However, sadly, it would be impossible for us to commit to eliminating false positives with every third-party anti-virus product out there. This is just our 2 cents: if you are using a third-party anti-virus product, we recommend uninstalling it and using Microsoft Defender instead. Here's why: Microsoft has a vested interest in doing the anti-virus job properly, without interfering with performance or producing false positives, because they want users on Windows to have the best experience possible. Anything less than the best experience makes Windows look bad, so it's obvious why Microsoft cares in this regard. Unfortunately the vast majority of third-party anti-virus companies do not maintain the same level of care. Some important notes: Many of the anti-virus companies take the stance that the more "viruses" they report, the "safer" users will think that their product is; they don't care if they report false positives or not, because they think users are stupid and it doesn't matter. They're not held accountable for false positives in any way, shape, or form, so they don't invest very much in getting rid of them. Many third-party anti-virus companies have a relatively scandalous history, including famous ones like Symantec/Norton, and McAfee; in the worst cases they have introduced viruses themselves that only their own software can fix, just so that they can look better than the competition. Third party anti-virus companies do not have much incentive to increase performance, because as they're often installed before a user even gets their computer, users will usually just blame the hardware or Windows itself.

What anti-virus product(s) are you running?

Also, one last thing: we are committed to making sure that new official versions of the software do not trip Microsoft Defender (Windows' built-in anti-virus), because we feel like it's the best solution out there, as it generally doesn't act like the boy who cried wolf, reporting millions of false positives, and for the most part it just works. However, sadly, it would be impossible for us to commit to eliminating false positives with every third-party anti-virus product out there. This is just our 2 cents: if you are using a third-party anti-virus product, we recommend uninstalling it and using Microsoft Defender instead. Here's why: Microsoft has a vested interest in doing the anti-virus job properly, without interfering with performance or producing false positives, because they want users on Windows to have the best experience possible. Anything less than the best experience makes Windows look bad, so it's obvious why Microsoft cares in this regard. Unfortunately the vast majority of third-party anti-virus companies do not maintain the same level of care. Some important notes: Many of the anti-virus companies take the stance that the more "viruses" they report, the "safer" users will think that their product is; they don't care if they report false positives or not, because they think users are stupid and it doesn't matter. They're not held accountable for false positives in any way, shape, or form, so they don't invest very much in getting rid of them. Many third-party anti-virus companies have a relatively scandalous history, including famous ones like Symantec/Norton, and McAfee; in the worst cases they have introduced viruses themselves that only their own software can fix, just so that they can look better than the competition. Third party anti-virus companies do not have much incentive to increase performance, because as they're often installed before a user even gets their computer, users will usually just blame the hardware or Windows itself.

Unfortunately there's not much we can do about that. As stated previously, it's a nightmare avoiding different false positives on different anti-virus engines. You might just need to add an Avast exclusion for it. Avast was not triggered when I tested the files on Virus Total, but sometimes Avast does time out during the tests, Virus Total doesn't always work perfectly.

Alright, 11.15 is out now. Apparently all we needed to do was recompile and it seems that it no longer trips Microsoft Defender. Just bad luck with that false positive I guess (but what else is new). If you're unable to auto-update to 11.15, you can manually download it here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wsflw0p0iu8g3o4/LaunchBox-11.15-Setup.exe?dl=0 Once downloaded, you can just manually install it over top of your existing LaunchBox folder, and it will keep all your games and settings. Just be sure to install it to the LaunchBox folder, like this: And not a LaunchBox folder inside of the LaunchBox folder like this: Thanks all; my apologies for the trouble. Sometimes we're blindsided with false positives like this and unfortunately there's really nothing we can do to improve it. It's just the nature of software development on Windows these days. Oh, one last note: as with many of the previous releases, we are still tripping a false positive with Symantec/Norton. This has been unavoidable for us unfortunately. Symantec/Norton seems to be the worst of the anti-virus industry, spitting out more false positives than most other providers.

Alright, 11.15 is out now. Apparently all we needed to do was recompile and it seems that it no longer trips Microsoft Defender. Just bad luck with that false positive I guess (but what else is new). If you're unable to auto-update to 11.15, you can manually download it here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wsflw0p0iu8g3o4/LaunchBox-11.15-Setup.exe?dl=0 Once downloaded, you can just manually install it over top of your existing LaunchBox folder, and it will keep all your games and settings. Just be sure to install it to the LaunchBox folder, like this: And not a LaunchBox folder inside of the LaunchBox folder like this: Thanks all; my apologies for the trouble. Sometimes we're blindsided with false positives like this and unfortunately there's really nothing we can do to improve it. It's just the nature of software development on Windows these days. Oh, one last note: as with many of the previous releases, we are still tripping a false positive with Symantec/Norton. This has been unavoidable for us unfortunately. Symantec/Norton seems to be the worst of the anti-virus industry, spitting out more false positives than most other providers.

I just explained to you our steps of running the software through Virus Total before release. We run through all false positives reported and do our best to confirm that they are false positives before release. Yes, we always review all commits before releasing new versions. We use Visual Studio as the build tools. I've run virus checks on Visual Studio on the release machine and they are not compromised. We run the normal tools like everyone else, and they're running in the background. I'm not sure what kind of audit you're looking for here, but it doesn't sound like we'd ever be able to satisfy you here, honestly. We're a very small team, and we do take security very seriously. But we also know how flawed the entire industry is, and it sounds like you have a false sense of security with it. We're doing our best here guys; if you want to paint us as the enemy, then go ahead, but we're really doing all we can do.

Hi all, sorry for the trouble. I've responded in another thread, but I will respond the same thing here as well: We can confirm that the reports are indeed false positives, but that's all we can say. Every single release we put out, we end up fighting with a million and one broken anti-virus programs to do our best to eliminate any false positives. But every release that task becomes more daunting and more difficult. It's very rare that Windows Defender reports a false positive like this, but Microsoft apparently updated the definitions today and it is now being reported as a false positive. Obviously we couldn't catch that because when we released 11.14 it wasn't being reported as a false positive. I'm going to look to attempt to put out a new release that does not throw a false positive, but it may or may not be possible, depending. The unfortunate truth is that most anti-virus programs are absolute garbage and report more false positives than true viruses, so they're much like the boy who cried wolf. They become useless because they cannot be trusted when a virus is reported. Windows Defender has a much better track record than most third-party anti-virus programs, but it's not perfect. When you're searching new developments for a series of bits and bytes from well over 30 years of viruses, it's nearly an impossible task to do without getting it wrong. Regardless, you're getting a very false sense of "security" if you're trusting an anti-virus program (especially a third-party anti-virus program) to tell you whether or not you have any bad or malicious software on your machine. That's the sad truth these days. We'll do our best to fix the issue. If you can, please report this to your anti-virus providers as a false positive.

No, it's the truth. What would you expect us to say in this regard? We've run every single file in the release through Virus Total. We always do before all official release. We're very confident it's a false positive.

We can confirm that the reports are indeed false positives, but that's all we can say. Every single release we put out, we end up fighting with a million and one broken anti-virus programs to do our best to eliminate any false positives. But every release that task becomes more daunting and more difficult. It's very rare that Windows Defender reports a false positive like this, but Microsoft apparently updated the definitions today and it is now being reported as a false positive. Obviously we couldn't catch that because when we released 11.14 it wasn't being reported as a false positive. I'm going to look to attempt to put out a new release that does not throw a false positive, but it may or may not be possible, depending. The unfortunate truth is that most anti-virus programs are absolute garbage and report more false positives than true viruses, so they're much like the boy who cried wolf. They become useless because they cannot be trusted when a virus is reported. Windows Defender has a much better track record than most third-party anti-virus programs, but it's not perfect. When you're searching new developments for a series of bits and bytes from well over 30 years of viruses, it's nearly an impossible task to do without getting it wrong. Regardless, you're getting a very false sense of "security" if you're trusting an anti-virus program (especially a third-party anti-virus program) to tell you whether or not you have any bad or malicious software on your machine. That's the sad truth these days. We'll do our best to fix the issue. If you can, please report this to your anti-virus providers as a false positive.

Yes, we will definitely migrate to MAUI for the Android app at some point (and thus look at a native Linux release of it). That's not really feasible for the Windows desktop, however, since we rely so heavily on WPF for the desktop theming engines. There's still nothing out there for any platform that really comes close to competing with WPF, so I don't see us navigating away from it any time soon for the desktop apps.

Because the Android version runs on Xamarin.Forms, which is the precursor to MAUI. You cannot port the desktop version to native Linux, period, because WPF simply doesn't run on native Linux. All Microsoft's MAUI is is the next version of Xamarin.Forms, which we were already using for the Android version. It's also worth noting that we do already use quite a bit of code from the desktop version in the Android version behind the scenes. MAUI is good, yes, but the desktop version as we know it cannot currently be built with MAUI. MAUI has come from mobile technologies, not desktop technologies.

That is a good point. Perhaps we should have made a note of that in the poll. We ended up putting it on the poll just because of the number of votes it has on BitBucket.

Go home Neil, you're drunk. No, but really, apparently he's drunk. Sorry y'all. I seriously hate putting up with this crap. But sometimes when you deal with volunteers, you get put between a rock and a hard place.

Sure, 11.14 should have addressed this. Let me know if it hasn't. That was an accidental bug, not something we did on purpose. We actually pulled the 11.13 release over that temporarily until we put out 11.14.

Just a quick clarification here; the Steam Deck will just as easily run Windows as it runs Linux. And when Valve says that it will play the "entire Steam library", they absolutely do not mean that it will play the entire Steam library on Linux.

Every new feature we always build can be turned off. I can't remember the last time we forced a new feature on anyone. That said, we always reserve the right to put customization options behind the premium version.

Yes, that is also true. We've always done our best to cater to the majority, not the vocal minority or (even worse), the richest minority. That is one huge advantage to a paid app over an open source app like Retroarch, where the highest-paying users determine more of the outcome of the product. Don't get me wrong, we love the crap out Retroarch. Open source is just open source.

There aren't enough Linux users to support any kind of a Patreon thing; that's been proven over and over again by a lack of interest. That said, please see my post above about the Android version. We do have a longer-term plan for a native Linux version, based on the Android version. However, it will be catered to lower-end devices, because the number of folks on Raspberry Pi style devices far outnumbers the number of desktop Linux users.

Keep in mind that we may still tackle those items at some point. The fact that they are not on this poll does not mean we won't implement them. We reduced the new poll down to 10 items, instead of the 40 that was on previous poll, in an effort to ensure that new polls will come up more quickly. There will be plenty of options for the future in this regard. Additionally, marquee features we have planned regardless of the poll results. Parsec integration, however, unfortunately is not a common request, so that one is a bit unlikely.

@Koroth @Daliant Please remember that we have thousands of requests coming in. Just because you've seen something a handful of times does not mean that it's our most requested feature. When we come up with poll items, we have to consider community requests, votes, as well as efforts to implement it. If something is requested a ton and easy to implement, of course we're gonna implement it. However, if something is incredibly difficult to implement, we may not tackle it even if it's often requested, or at least not until we feel like we can prioritize the time required to tackle it. For example, I don't feel like integrated controller mappings are really all that high up on the request list, but it's also a very time consuming undertaking. That said, part of the Retroarch integration future features that we can see tackling would be similar to that.

Those of you who might be interested in a new version for Android, please see here: Also, FYI, in the slightly more distant future, this Android version should be able to be ported to native Linux, as well as eventually Windows for use on lower end devices. That's a ways off, but this is our current plan for lower end devices.

Hey all, just a quick teaser. Development is coming along nicely. We now have a few new views with wheels, Banner Box-style banners, etc., as well as favorites, folder options, and more. I'm hoping to get the new version out within a few weeks.

Thank you @viking! Both Colorful themes available in the Themes Manager in Big Box have been updated, so if you have downloaded them from the themes manager, you can update them from there. Otherwise, if you've downloaded your theme from the forums, the forums themes have been updated as well.

We are looking into this one. Not currently, but we'll keep it mind for a new release.