GameGuard

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nProtect GameGuard (sometimes called GG or GameMon) is a game anti-cheating software developed by INCA Internet. It is bundled with many multiplayer online games such as MapleStory to block certain applications and common methods of cheating, and, to a lesser extent, protect the game user, like blocking keyloggers. It hides the game application process, monitors the entire memory range, terminates applications defined by the game vendor and INCA to be cheats, blocks certain calls to DirectX functions and Windows APIs and auto-updates itself to change as new threats surface.

Because of its method of actuation (similar to a rootkit), it is criticized for being too invasive. The software installs a device driver and offers no way to uninstall it; even uninstalling the game will still leave some files hidden on the system.

GameGuard is sometimes cited by users of a specific game as unusable because of numerous errors when attempting to run a game, including the infamous "Error 411", which details that nProtect does not know why there is an error.

Hackers also manage to bypass GameGuard, even though it is constantly updated.

GameGuard also causes an error with Windows Vista that causes it to be marked ungenuine. This has been fixed with a patch, but many games have not applied this patch yet.