Bitdefender needs significant changes for games

Rock.87

Bitdefender requires manual exclusion of each individual game file which is practically unfeasible and incredibly time consuming. Even with such effort certain files often remain overlooked. Conversely ESET NOD32 provides the option to exempt an entire directory ensuring significantly smoother gameplay. Based on my extensive experience as a long term user I have been compelled to migrate to ESET temporarily for my PC despite my preference for Bitdefender’s robust security and its exceptional support team and forum experts. I believe Bitdefender’s Advanced Threat Defense (ATD) should be sufficient for managing excluded folders without compromising security. I strongly urge the development team to integrate a folder exclusion feature to ensure the software remains competitive and user friendly for the gaming community.

Alexandru_BD

Hello and thanks for raising this. There is an important distinction here between Antivirus exclusions and Advanced Threat Defense exclusions. Bitdefender does allow folder exclusions for Antivirus scans, so you don't need to exclude every individual game file one by one on that layer. However, ATD only accepts .exe exclusions, because this security module actually monitors the behavior of running processes rather than folders.

In other words, the current setup is not file-by-file only across the board, but it can feel less convenient than products that offer a more unified per-game trust workflow.

For gaming, the recommended approach is usually to enable the Game Profile and add the game to the Games list so Bitdefender postpones scans and updates and suppresses interruptions, but I think you already know this. 😊

The concept is that exclusions should be added only if there's a specific issue such as a false positive or measurable performance impact, but other than that, games should run well on most modern systems with an antivirus installed. If exclusions are necessary, you can add the game folder under Antivirus exceptions and the main game .exe under ATD exceptions. This would be the way to do it.

Perhaps a simpler “trust this game” workflow that maps the right exclusions to the right protection layers would likely help gamers without weakening protection by default, we could argue that. However, while this button sounds simple to implement, under the hood it has to coordinate multiple protection layers without opening an easy abuse path for malware. In other words, the hard part is making it safe enough that malware cannot exploit it.
If you ask me, I think this is not really something feasible from the security perspective.. Because in reality, different protection layers speak different languages. File AV thinks in paths, folders, extensions. Behavior monitoring thinks in processes and runtime actions. Other components may think in network connections, s.c.r.i.p.t interpreters, or protected folders. Different exclusion types exist for antivirus, attack surface reduction, controlled folder access, and process-opened files. That means a single trust button needs a mapping layer that translates “this game” into the right rule type for each engine..

Regards