The worst anti-cheat: GameGuard

Update (04/05/2016): It seems that most of the issues don’t occur anymore. It has been like that for a month or two. While I doubt about how effective it is, I know that there are mods that can hook into the game so maybe GameGuard is just being more tolerant on our systems.

GameGuard is often bundled with Free 2 Play games especially when they’re Asian games. But it’s trash.

I play Phantasy Star Online 2 and it’s bundled with it.

What is GameGuard?

GameGuard is produced by nProtect and is supposed to be one of many anti-cheat software.

Its main job is to hide the game’s process. It seems to make sure that some DLL don’t get loaded by the game or any other app.

The issues I experienced

I have experienced a few issues, some have had me reinstall my system and some have just given me headaches.

The issues I had were generally:

1. No process can be spawned (start menu, desktop icon, run prompt);
2. No console, such as cmd.exe or cygwin, can be opened;
3. No process in cygwin can be spawned (could not fork);
4. GameGuard does not end when the game is closed and I can’t restart the game because GameGuard doesn’t want me to spawn another GameGuard;
5. Google Chrome doesn’t work;
6. Can’t reboot (can’t spawn shutdown.exe ?);
7. My DNS breaking and not accepting domains I don’t have in cache;
8. Some software will crash when started:
   • Google Chrome;
   • Media Player Classic (CCCP);
   • hexchat.

The list goes on.

Mailing the support

I once contacted the nProtect’s support because my issue was going nowhere. This was the mail I sent:

To: support@nprotect.com
Subject: Issue with GameGuard not closing after game ends

Hi,

I’m currently having an issue with GameGuard for Phantasy Star Online 2 (PSO2). Everytime I play PSO2 and finish I must reboot my computer (sometimes do a hard reboot) because the “GameMon64.des” process does end when the game is closed.

I know it doesn’t end because when I relaunch the game, the new “GameMon64.des” process that was spawned doesn’t hide the game’s or GameGuard’s process and is the only process to not end once I’m greeted with a “np1002” error.

If I try to kill the process I’m notified that I don’t have the required permissions for that (which I do have since I have admin powers).

I have tried deleting the whole GameGuard folder everytime I launch the game and nothing changed.

I’m running Windows 8.1 64bit and Kaspersky.

What can I do to not have anymore issues ?

Thanks.

I never got a response but after a while the issue was gone.

Conclusion

I hate GameGuard, it doesn’t stop cheating and people can still inject DLLs anyway so what’s the point?

I’ll still use it because I have no choice if I want to play PSO2.