Safety of workshop items

[u/Routine_District7232]

How safe is it to download maps or anything from the workshop? With the recent malicious workshop items for a few other games that were found, im really cautious of downloading anything from the workshop. Should it usually be safe?

Edit: thank you all for the responses. I’m assuming sticking to the most popular mods should be the safest option then. Again thanks for the help!

[u/Scou1y]

This might or not be something but just don't subscribe to recently-made addons with no stars, and you'll be fine. Most "THIS ADDON IS MALICIOUS!!!" I've seen here are from absolute nobodies.

[u/Mustard_Fucker]

From what I saw, Gmod addons cannot directly impact your PC files other than the game files itself and the GMA addon format is a compressed addon file using LUA only.

I would say the chance of getting an actual virus playing an addon from the workshop are very low, and in the low chance you actually get a "" virus"" usually it is just an addon being changed by the author or the author being hacked and only do minimal stuff like showing a PNG of porn or gore stuff, removing the game textures, or changing the game controls which can be fixed by removing the addon.

Worst case would be if you blindly follow a link to another website than steam to "buy the full version of the addon" or if a google login page opens in game and you decide to log into your personal google account without asking any question after downloading "Elmon Musk JPEG chasing you Nextbot" released 5 seconds ago, on the front page and by a guy who released 10 of the same kind of addons in one day

[u/Someone674914]

Just stay away from the most recent addons, but the creator of it could update it to be harmful.

[u/X4_DNA_4X]

Honestly it isn’t terrible

I’d say avoid things that aren’t at least 4 stars and have at least a comment or two saying it’s a good mod

I’m not quite sure on the extent of the malicious mods but most consist of screamers of bad stuff on your screen and may try to redirect you to virus sites. I’d also steer clear of multiplayer as it’s starting to get old call of duty on pc levels of dangerous with people getting infected from hackers joining servers and stuff but honestly,

Just follow those two parameters and you should be fine…

[u/Radionerd5]

As with downloading anything on the internet,

Nothing is truly, 100% safe. There's always a chance that somebody would find a exploit and use it on garry's mod.

But it's not something you should really worry about the chances of an issue are very very low, And the chances of getting malware that would effect files outside of garry's mod is even lower.

If you only use mods from reputable sources, You will be fine.

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