Controversy over Lose/Lose

Lose/Lose warns users that it will delete files on their systems. Art or malware, that is the question. Over the last couple of days there has been a lot of controversy between anti-virus vendors and bloggers over the new Galaga-like "game" by Zach Gage called Lose/Lose for Mac OS X. Unlike most games, Lose/Lose has real life consequences; each of the aliens in the game is based on a randomly selected file on the players computer and, when an alien is killed by the player, the file is actually deleted.

Should the players ship be destroyed, the application will delete itself. The game makes this reality very clear when it's first launched, but some anti-virus vendors, such as Sophos, Symantec and Trend Micro, are now classifying it as malware because some users may apparently overlook the warning.

According to a post on the Cult of Mac blog by Lonnie Lazar, the game in question first appeared online in September of this year and is featured in Electrofringe’s exhibition of online art, Electro Online 2009. Mac users are very capable of distinguishing between art and malware; Security expert Chris Boyd points out that several online sources, including Wired, The Escapist and Joystiq, have all been posting about it for sometime, however, the anti-virus vendors have only recently "came across" or "discovered" it.

(crve)