To my Norton Internet Security program which deletes the program as soon as I download it.

As much as I love LDW games, I ama bit leery of downloading the regular game, I am not going to spend $9+ on it just to have it deleted as soon as every time I DL it is declared a virus and removed.

I'm very sorry that you have encountered a problem installing and playing Virtual Families 2: Our Dream House, due to a report of a virus. We take great care to ensure that all of our game downloads are virus-free when they are downloaded from our server. If your computer is known to be free of viruses (other than the notification you received of a virus in our game), it is likely that you have received what's known as a "false positive" from your anti-virus software. Anti-virus programs use definitions that are sometimes overly broad, which sometimes result in them falsely identifying viruses in computer software. The anti-virus program then places the scanned program in quarantine, even though there is no virus present. We have also seen our anti-virus software quarantine some of our games on test machines because of a supposed virus, when there is no virus. As a result, we do work with the various anti-virus companies to correct the false identification of viruses in our games. Most of the time, if you will make sure that your anti-virus software is completely up-to-date, the problem will be resolved, and you will be able to install and play the game. Alternatively, you can try removing the game from quarantine and exempting it from further scanning. That is a safe thing to do as long as your computer is known to be otherwise free of viruses.

If you are concerned about the above recommendations, please continue reading this additional background about how anti-virus software operates, and the pitfalls that come with it:

According to the help information of one prominent maker of anti-virus software: "Rarely, a file that does not contain a virus is detected as infected. This might happen because a particular virus definition is designed to catch every possible variation of the virus. Because the virus definition must be necessarily broad, the software sometimes reports that a clean file is infected."

When this happens, the game's .exe file is typically placed in quarantine by the anti-virus software, rather than being deleted, and can be recovered by referring to the help information for your particular anti-virus software. Since the procedures vary with different anti-virus programs, we are unable to provide specific steps for recovering files from quarantine. If your file is not in quarantine, then it is very likely that your anti-virus software has deleted the .exe file. Fortunately, this issue should be resolved the next time your anti-virus software updates its virus definitions (usually about a week for most anti-virus programs - be sure to use live update to update your virus definitions).

If the anti-virus software update does not resolve the problem, please reply with the exact name & type of software you use and the exact message generated by the software.

Norton tries too much to be extra "helpful", doesn't it?

When I had a computer running Norton, I often had to turn it off to install games and programs -- even when they were not downloads. I've not had that issue with Avast.

But don't turn it off to install anything unless you are absolutely sure it is safe.

Norton is not quarantining the game, it is completely deleting it. I wish it would quarantine it, then at least I would be able to rescue it and fix the System to recognize it as safe.

I'll send a false positive report on it, hopefully they can fix it so I can at least download it and take it out of quarantine.

Odd. I had no trouble Downloading the Demo version from Big Fish games. I really hate sending middle men money when I would much rather it go to the game designers directly. The first ime I bought an LDW game I did it though the middle man which was fine, but once I connected to LDW I would rather my money not have to go through so many hands to get to you guys.

Please note that other websites do not always update their version of our games, even when we send them the update, so to make certain you always have the updated version, you may wish to keep our version.

If you will give me the exact message that Norton gives you when it quarantines the game, I will be happy to contact them personally about this false positive.

It isn't even quarantining the virus, I am getting a pop-up down in the right hand lower corner of the screen. It lists the file name and then says "VirtualFamilies2Setup_DEMO.exe is not safe and has been removed."

Thank you for this information, Magesteff. I will contact them as soon as possible to get this false positive removed.

I like your games, and I want to see you get the lions share of it instead of some middle man company. I like those companies, to introduce me to new games producers, so I don't mind buying the first game of a company I have never played with before, let them get the dollars for the introduction, but after that intro, I'd rather be talking directly to the people who make the game.

I got some extra income this month and purchased the Full version yesterday- I'm off and running with my first family!

Thanks Xay!