GShade Sucks

Resources for migrating from the aftermath of GShade

Resources

What happened?

On February 6th, 2023, an update to GShade's installer was silently released that contained malicious code. This malicious code would shut off the user's PC when it detected the installer was being run in unauthorized ways.

Marot, the developer of GShade, admitted that this was purposefully done, and has said "anything could have been in the payload".

What now?

Switch to ReShade. There is a guide on how to migrate from GShade to ReShade.

ReShade is free, open source software, and reports indicate it performs faster than GShade (especially on low-end hardware).

But I can keep using GShade if I want, right?

Not without modification. The developer of GShade was banned off of GitHub. Given GShade's DRM requiring it to fetch information from GitHub before running, this means that GShade is now unusable.

If you absolutely need to use GShade, you can use this patcher to remove the update check. It is highly suggested you move to ReShade when you are ready to.

Is it safe to use GShade with the patcher?

The malware in GShade was specifically inside of the installer code. Given that the installer is now non-functional, it is believed safe to use. It is still recommended to switch to ReShade.

What's the difference between ReShade and GShade?

GShade is a modified version of ReShade. ReShade is free, open source software, and is the original project. GShade is a closed source, proprietary fork of ReShade.

ReShade doesn't work as well as GShade!

Please report incompatibilities to the Rika's Shader Porting Project Discord server.