Section A — Short answer (30 marks: 6 × 5 marks)
You’ll be playing a single-player campaign, a skirmish against AI, or even trying to start a multiplayer match, and suddenly the game locks you out, displaying a message that file tampering has been detected. Often, it forces you to restart or disables achievements and save files.
Sometimes background services are the issue.
The error in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition is a false positive in many cases, triggered by legitimate software (overlays, mods, antivirus). If troubleshooting fails, the most reliable solution is:
In this case, the error is doing its job. To play again, you will likely need to remove the cheating software and wait for the shadowban to lift, though repeated offenses can result in a permanent account ban.