Your Steam Game is Detected IDP.Generic: 4 Things To Do

Issues Faced by Most Avast Users

When an Avast antivirus user interface detects the idp.generic file, most users quit the game.

Let me introduce you to Paladins. I’m sure that most of you know this name because you’ve probably heard of Team Fortress or Overwatch (yes, precisely them).

What Does idp.generic Mean?

The “IDP generic” flag means that your antivirus detected a potential malware file and flagged it as such.

You may want to double-check this with another program or take the necessary steps (e.g., quarantine, removal) in order to make sure you do not accidentally delete any important files from your computer by mistake.

But there’s a new problem to it.

IDP generic detects the file at the time of game launch and immediately crashes Steam. This makes it impossible to play the Steam game going forward unless the idp.generic is removed from the Avast database.

If you make a full scan with Avast before launching the game, Virus Total will probably give you “0”.

So, what do you do?

4 Ways to Resolve the IDP.generic Error

Method 1: If you’re using the Steam folder to store all of your game files, try creating an exception rule to this directory.

Method 2: Report the false positive alarm to Avast.

Method 3: Submit files to Avast Threat Labs to report the false positive alarm encountered for the game file. Follow these steps to submit the file:

•  In Quarantine, check the box next to the relevant file.
•  Select More choices (three dots) to Send for analysis.
• Click the Potential malware or  False positive option to provide any additional information about the file into the text area, then finally click Send.

Method 4: Email Avast mentioning that the false-positive needs to be stopped, e.g., Paladins.exe citing the full path and directory information.

Avast Malware Detection and Blocking

Avast protects users by detecting and reporting any suspicious files or activity as soon as possible.

With this cutting-edge infrastructure and access to a massive repository of security data collected from hundreds of millions of machines all around the globe, Avast has the world’s largest, most sophisticated threat-detection network.

Avast uses six layers of deep protection, powered by unique cloud-based analytics and machine learning algorithms, to keep users safe when malware targets their devices.

Check this infographic.

Web Shield

Web Shield is a web security service that protects against malware, ransomware, and phishing websites. Web Shield also blocks spam and other unwanted ads to provide a cleaner browsing experience.

Static Scanner

Avast’s Static Scanner performs a thorough malware scan on your PC based on advanced fuzzy and algorithmic matching.

It also protects against ransomware and other dangerous programs that may have already infected your system or might do so in the future.

Emulator

Emulators protect against new, more powerful types of malware that could come out on a day. This is because they can stop it from working.

Emulators also make it harder for the people who created the malware to change parts of their code.

Deep Screen

DeepScreen can identify malware on your computer by using machine learning. It creates a cloned version of your computer and then tests suspicious files.

Cyber Capture

CyberCapture automatically activates when needed to protect you from the rarest and most sophisticated malware. CyberCapture locks down and submits potentially malicious files to the clean-room environment of Avast’s Threat Labs.

Behaviour Shield

Behavior Shield watches what is happening on your computer while you are using it. It can tell if someone is trying to stop Windows Update or Firewall. If Behavior Shield finds something terrible, it will stop the activity and quarantine the files as required.

As per Avast and AVG Official, The behavior shield is an active behavioral scanner, and the.EXE (or some other process or behavior triggered when it runs) is causing the detection.

This explains why a regular file/virus scan would not detect it.

Is idp.generic Bad?

idp.generic is just an error message that pops up when the game tries to launch and Avast detects it as something malicious on your computer, which is why you need to add exceptions for Steam in order for this problem to go away.

The only drawback is that it may cause Steam to crash if it finds the file during game startup.

What does Avast FileRepMalware mean?

The Avast FileRepMalware tag will be assigned to a file as a warning if the following conditions are met:

1) Not many Avast users have downloaded, installed, or used the file

2) It is still available on user machines.

In this case, we may reasonably assume that while there’s no information as to how harmful the malware might be for you personally (i.e., depending on your system configuration), we can already get a sense of its popularity among other users from just those two elements alone.

3) The file is not yet added to the Avast Virus Chest

4) The number of users who downloaded the file from this domain is relatively small.

Conclusion

Avast is an antivirus with a comprehensive suite of features and functions to protect users from malware, phishing, and other malicious attacks.

It includes an idp generic, which identifies and blocks any suspicious application, file, or behavior to prevent it from harming the user’s system.

But IDP generic error is a problem almost all Avast and AVG users face when it suddenly detects the game executable from Steam as idp.generic.

By now, I hope you got the information about the issue in detail and how it can be resolved.

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