Symantec was, just like NordicHardware, a sponsor of DreamHack Summer 2007. While we focused on the hardware bit, Symantec was there to promote its products and at the same time make a survey of the people there. The results have now been published and it seems that as many as up to 80% of all gamers have been infected by viruses, malware or experienced hacking or phishing attacks. The reason is simply that they turn off their firewalls, antivirus and anti-spyware applications to improve performance, and then forget to turn them back on. The problem isn’t that they turn them off to gain performance, there is a minimal risk of being infected when gaming, but that so many forget to turn them back on.
The basic problem is that both firewalls and antivirus applications have tendencies to be real processor and memory hogs, and the Norton suite certainly has a reputation of being one of the worst.
Before DreamHack summer 2007, Symantec had apparently taken in the criticism (bloating, sluggishness, etc.) and now claims that its Norton 360 will affect the overall performance as little as possible. We would certainly like to know if anyone has tested Norton 360 and whether it really is less of a performance hog than the previous versions.
What are your experiences of antiviruses and gaming?
