Mac Game/Trojan Wipes a File for Each Alien Killed
A new piece of software developed by Fine Arts student Zach Gage is making waves in the security community.

As part of his Master of Fine Arts thesis project, Zach Gage wrote a game for Macs that deletes files from your machine as you play. Dubbed Lose/Lose, the title sees the player take on the role of a space captain on a "seemingly endless quest to destroy attacking aliens." Each alien is represents a file on your computer. Killing the alien means destroying that file. You have one life and if an alien touches you, you explode and the application will delete itself.
Describing the program as "a videogame with real life consequences," Zach says he tried to explore what it means to kill in a videogame. On his website, the student says that while touching the aliens will lose you the game and killing them will get you points, the aliens don't actually fire at you. "This calls into question the player's mission, which is never explicitly stated, only hinted at through classic game mechanics," writes Gage. "Is the player supposed to be an aggressor? Or merely an observer, traversing through a dangerous land?"
However exploratory, experimental or just interesting it seems, users are warned several times before they download and before they play that Lose/Lose will result in the permanent deletion of files from your hard drive and CNet reports that Symantec, Sophos and Intego have flagged the application as malware, with each of them calling the "Trojan" OSX.Loosemaque, OSX/LoseGame-A and OSX/LoserGame, respectively.
What do you think, malware or just harmful game? Let us know in the comments below!
Try sending people low power letter bombs that will merely damage their hands, but with a red letter warning that reads "Letter Bomb, open at your own risk". Someone is bound to open the letter at some point.
Then good luck telling the judge it was a social experiment and you gave adequate warning.
And if you read the warnings and still play knowing full well it will delete your files then its your own fault and that is just tough luck for you.
How does it possibly explore what it means to kill in a game? You aren't hurting other people like real killing, you're destroying your own computer. This is an exercise in masochism, not morality.
A video game with real life consequences would harm others through the player's aggression and harm the player for being injured or destroyed etc. If you're going to try and simulate real life consequences at least pick a reasonable scenario.
There's quite a few games for mac, its not like the Linux situation.
This is an awful comparison. Think of it more like an innocent moron, walking up to someone's house, and finding a 'letter bomb' which clearly has warnings written all over it. They then take the letter bomb, bring it into their own home full of valuables, and open it just to see what's inside.
I'd love to see someone trying to explain to a judge that they purposely downloaded a clearly marked virus, ignored their anti-malware software warnings, and deleted all their files simply because they were too ignorant to understand what "USE AT YOUR OWN RISK" means.
How are you even accessing the internet?
Could'nt have put it better myself.
Another point though... Windows/Linux alternative? Sounds like fun =]
I SORT of understand where you're coming from, but the consequences of our actions when playing video games differs extremely from the consequences of our actions in real life.
The whole point of video games, in addition to entertainment, is that those consequences are....inconsequential. We go into them knowing we can abandon reason, morality (if we so choose) etc.
Looking back on that one time I dressed up in a clown costume and unloaded an assault rifle at a water park, I really don't think having played this game would have made me thought about the consequences.
While very funny, this isn't quite true. The game probably deletes files belonging to the user that is playing, or asks to run privileged so it can delete other files too. There is no exploit there...the user is already supposed to able to delete files they have permissions for.
So, I agree that this should be flagged by a/v software...but I don't really think you can count this one against mac or osx. You could just as easily write a Windows game to do this.
(and I'm usually the first in line to make fun of apple products)
Gives it a Tron like feel. Lose a life - lose your life, or at least your job.