is it actually safe to play modded balatro? and explain why.

[obsidian lintel]

i’ve always wanted to play balatro with mods and i thought it was going to be easy to do so, but for some reason after downloading the mod manager/launcher from the official website and the official github download link, windows defender seems to have detected some kind of virus (ig?) called PUA:/Win32/GameHack, it’s something that goes along with that, sure it’s just a potential that it’s harmful but what are your guys experiences after playing modded balatro for a while? is it okay if i just turn off real time protection? or is there any other solution? thanks in advance

[sudden wyvern]

I don't know about mod manager, but mods in general are plain sourcecode, so at least for the big ones if someone had found malicious code in there they probably would've spoken up. Can always check for yourself if you're worried about any mod in particular
Again, I don't know anything about mod manager or if that applies to that; but if you don't trust it there's the option of not using it, it's not required to play modded :3

[obsidian lintel]

oh that’s cool to know, but does it require the steammodded mod in order to actually play the mods? oh yeah and one more thing, it seems like lovely is also required and ofc my wd said the exact same thing but with a different name of “potential” virus

as for the mod manager i’m using the one that was made by skyline, it appears to be a popular manager but there are only a few people who are having this issue

which includes me for some reason :(

[sudden wyvern]

Yeah a lot of mods require Steamoddded to work
If you want an explanation for why it gets flagged, this is from the installation guide for Steamodded

[obsidian lintel]

i guess that’s just how it is then, i think i’m just going to turn off my real time protection, anyways thanks for the info.

oh my god

i tried playing the game with that mod manager again and now it detects a trojan

shoot

[orchid moat]

tl;dr: your computer has some powerful capabilities that are most commonly used by malware taking advantage of that power to cause harm. Lovely uses some of those same capabilities. It's not malware (if you're really paranoid, you can vet its source code and build it yourself), but since it does those things any good antivirus will flag it.

I recommend creating an exception for just version.dll instead of turning off your antivirus entirely (although I've heard many of them refuse to work like that sometimes)

[obsidian lintel]

i think i finally got it right, i stopped trying to use the mod manager that i found and downloaded lovely (only the version.dll file) and steam modded from each of their github repository and now it doesn’t detect anything suspicious, this is my first ever being attacked by viruses from trying to download mods but at least i learned my lesson

[orchid moat]

tbf I don't use the mod manager but it seems to be fine? glad you got everything working, though

[obsidian lintel]

yeah thanks, but uhhh

is it okay if i keep lovely running and have “gamehack” as an allowed threat

sorry for asking too many qs

[orchid moat]

probably?

so long as you're careful with what you download and run from the internet and antivirus shouldn't be doing much anyways, but the added protection is nice

[obsidian lintel]

right, it seems to be running well but the game just crashed twice, but it’s not really an issue to me

i have one more question though

steam modded and lovely are both required to run the mods right? or is it just lovely? or i guess none of them?

[wicked crown]

There are mods that run only on lovely

But most mods require both

Also mod manager isn’t a virus either, you can go to the thread and ask any questions you have over there

Modding is safe, and most importantly open source, so you can see what code is being run and determine for yourself if it’s malware

[obsidian lintel]

oh well, so it’s safe to use both of them

[wicked crown]

Yes

[obsidian lintel]

idk about that, i downloaded the one that was made by some guy named skyline and my wd detected a trojan called bearfoos

idk if its safe to keep a trojan just to play modded balatro

[wicked crown]

Is it called Balatro mod manager?

[obsidian lintel]

so i didn’t use the manager at all and downloaded the mods through each individual github repository

[obsidian lintel]

yeah that

i even downloaded it from the official site

[wicked crown]

It’s fully safe, it’s a false flag

[obsidian lintel]

it could be a false positive

but im a bit paranoid

[wicked crown]

It is, I’ve verified it with the provider that flagged it

[sudden wyvern]

Just because it says it found a trojan doesn't mean that you actually have a trojan, it's called a false positive
And if you already ran it, then you'd have the trojan either way and would need to do a lot more than just uninstalling the mod manager -w-

[wicked crown]

You can do this alternatively, the mod manager is just an easier way to get everything and keep them updated

[obsidian lintel]

maybe at some point if wd doesn’t detect the same trojan anymore then i will try using the manager again

[obsidian lintel]

it surely is more convenient to have it that way but idk im still paranoid and even if it isn’t a trojan i think i’d rather do the other way

it feels much safer

[wicked crown]

That’s fair, my point is that it’s open source and you can verify that it is not a malware yourself

Lots of people use it after vetting it themselves

[obsidian lintel]

well maybe at some point, i will try using it again

right, and thanks for the info

[obsidian lintel]

i guess my laptop now has a trojan? but i did remove it right away after it detected the trojan

i will probably have to do a full scan at some point just to be safe, which’s going to take like 1/4 of an entire day :(

the alternative way seems to be my only option

[sudden wyvern]

I mean did the mod manager actually start or did your antivirus catch it while trying to start

[obsidian lintel]

pretty sure it did both

[wicked crown]

It does not

[obsidian lintel]

hopefully, i’m still a bit paranoid though

[sudden wyvern]

But hey if you have it, a big part of the modding comunity has it as well, if that's any consolidation

I tried out mod manager yesterday, don't think I'll end up using it anyways though
Didn't get flagged by windows defender either

[obsidian lintel]

i mean it’d be really weird when there’s an entire community that uses the same exact manager but they never encountered this issue while i’m one of the tiny percentage who got a literal trojan

i wasn’t even expecting any virus since balatro is such a reputable game

[wicked crown]

Vanilla Balatro is different from mods

[obsidian lintel]

well thats weird ._.

[wicked crown]

Mods are community based

Balatro has nothing to do with them

[sudden wyvern]

Again, there is no trojan or virus, the false positive is well known, it's explained on the website, and people would be shouting not to use it

[wicked crown]

👍

If it was a Trojan, it would have been taken down by now

[obsidian lintel]

oh

that makes sense

[obsidian lintel]

so it’s probably just a false positive

but i’m still not gonna use it anyway :D

[sudden wyvern]

Me neither, just because I didn't see an option for managing mod versions and that's kinda why I wanted to try it out in the first place

[obsidian lintel]

idk why im just rlly scared of having my laptop being attacked by random stuff, even if it’s just a false positive

[obsidian lintel]

i actually had the same thought