Windows: Discord falsely identifies Hex voice dictation as the verified game “HEX: Shards of Fate” #445

Summary

Kinda of a potential small one, but*

On Windows, running Hex (the local-first voice dictation app) causes Discord Desktop to identify and publicly advertise “HEX: Shards of Fate”, an unrelated video game, as the current activity. The entry even has Discord's verified-game badge, and my Discord profile displays “Playing HEX: Shards of Fate” with elapsed play time.

I have already reported the incorrect identification to Discord. I'm filing it here as a cross-application compatibility report because it may be triggered by Hex's Windows executable name and/or PE version metadata. I don't know whether Hex can fix this independently of Discord's game-recognition database, but it seems worth investigating and tracking, especially for the Windows beta.

This concerns Discord's detected game/activity identity, not Discord push-to-talk shortcut integration (the subject of #175).

What happened? (Observed behavior)

My two screenshots show:

1. Discord → User Settings → Registered Games / Current Game: an enabled “HEX: Shards of Fate” entry with Discord's blue verified-game checkmark. The process path displayed beneath the game name begins with:

   C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\voice-control\versions\2.3.1\HEX…
   

   Discord truncates the end of the path in this UI. The visible version directory is 2.3.1. This is the Hex voice dictation installation directory—not the path of the unrelated HEX: Shards of Fate game.

2. Discord profile popout: the activity section shows “Playing HEX: Shards of Fate” and the unrelated game's logo, with a running activity timer (approximately 1:41:11 at the time of capture). Discord also shows the action “Add to your ‘Games in Rotation’”. So the problem is not just a misleading label in Discord's settings: the false game identity actually propagates into profile activity.

I was not playing or running the game; I was using/running Hex dictation software.

Screenshots: Please attach both original screenshots to this issue: (1) Discord's Current Game settings showing the detected path and verified game title; (2) the Discord profile popout showing Playing HEX: Shards of Fate. The images were included in the original report but cannot be transferred as GitHub-hosted attachments via the issue-creation integration.

Environment

Steps to reproduce

These are best-effort steps inferred from the observed configuration, not yet a controlled reproduction on multiple machines.

1. Install/run Hex 2.3.1 on Windows 11.
2. Open the Discord desktop client and enable game/activity detection and profile activity display.
3. Launch Hex and leave its background/tray application running. Do not launch the game HEX: Shards of Fate.
4. Navigate to Discord → User Settings → Registered Games (or the equivalent Current Game section).
5. Inspect the detected application's title, verified-game indicator and underlying executable path.
6. Open your Discord profile popout (or view it from a second account) and inspect the current activity card.
7. As an isolation check, quit Hex completely from the tray and observe whether Discord clears the false activity; then launch Hex again and see if it reappears.

Actual result

Discord associates Hex with the verified game “HEX: Shards of Fate”, including the game's branding and a playing-time counter.

Expected result

Discord should not represent an unrelated speech dictation tool as a specific video game. Ideally this background utility would not be presented as a game at all; at minimum it should not inherit HEX: Shards of Fate's verified identity and artwork.

Technical investigation: possible Windows executable-name collision

Hypothesis only—not a confirmed root cause. There is a plausible identifier collision between the app's short name Hex and the game's name HEX: Shards of Fate:

• The Windows Hex binary is distributed as hex.exe, documented in the Windows installer and the Windows self-updater.
• The Windows version resources generated by build.rs currently include FileDescription = Hex, ProductName = Hex, OriginalFilename = hex.exe, and InternalName = hex.
• Discord recognizes a game called HEX: Shards of Fate, and the screenshots show Discord linking that specific game's identity to a process in Hex's installation directory.

Discord might be matching on the executable basename, PE version metadata, process path, a curated game's executable signature, or some combination. The screenshots establish the false association but do not establish the matching algorithm. It might be entirely a Discord-side database/signature issue.

Version nuance: The screenshot shows an older-looking %APPDATA%\voice-control\versions\2.3.1\… directory, while the current dev branch uses %APPDATA%\hex\versions\<version>\hex.exe. Please distinguish 2.3.1 from newer dev builds when testing. An install-directory rename alone may not solve an executable-name match.

Suggested investigation / possible remediation

1. Confirm the affected versions: reproduce with the official Windows 2.3.1 installer and, separately, the current dev build. Verify whether quitting the Hex tray process removes the game activity.
2. Confirm the actual matched process: compare Discord's displayed path with Task Manager or PowerShell (Get-CimInstance Win32_Process for executable path/command line and Get-Item ... | Select-Object -ExpandProperty VersionInfo for the PE metadata). The screenshots truncate the final filename, so please verify it rather than assuming it.
3. Isolate what Discord keys on, if feasible: in a disposable test environment, compare an otherwise identical build with a distinct executable basename (e.g. anomaly-hex.exe / hex-dictation.exe) against one with the original filename and altered version resources. Avoid interpreting a single test as definitive; Discord's rules may depend on multiple identifiers or caching.
4. Check whether the newest builds already behave differently: the dev tree's packaging, metadata, and support directory are not necessarily identical to the installed 2.3.1 build.
5. If there is a safe Hex-side fix, consider an unambiguous Windows process identity. A distributed executable rename needs coordinated migration/testing of the Cargo/build artifact name, installer, updater download/staging/activation, Start Menu and launch-at-login shortcuts, process selection, signature verification, existing installed versions and rollback. Both the installer and the self-updater explicitly refer to hex.exe. Users should not manually rename the installed binary as a workaround.
6. If Discord owns the correction, maintain a known-issue entry or documentation with a temporary workaround and the relevant process identification. I have already submitted a report to Discord; any maintainer-side escalation with program identity/metadata may help.

I would avoid any workaround that relies on undocumented Discord APIs, process injection, or attempts to hide the process from system tools.

Impact

• False public presence: friends see me as playing a game I have not opened.
• Long-lived false activity: Hex typically stays running in the system tray, so a bogus game timer can accumulate for hours.
• Misleading authority: the verified-game badge and game artwork make the incorrect identification appear credible.
• Trust and privacy: a productivity/background utility unexpectedly changes what my Discord profile claims I am doing.
• Potentially broader scope: other Windows Hex users with Discord activity detection enabled might see the same behavior; this has not yet been independently verified across installations.

Temporary workaround

Discord's Registered Games page lets users turn off activity for the detected entry, or activity sharing can be disabled globally. This masks the symptom but is not ideal for users who want accurate real-game activity; I have not verified whether Discord preserves the per-entry setting across restarts or Hex updates.

Acceptance criteria

• Identify whether this affects Windows Hex 2.3.1, the latest dev build, or both.
• Verify which Hex process Discord is matching and determine whether executable name, PE metadata, path, or Discord-side signatures are involved.
• Running Hex without the actual game should not display “HEX: Shards of Fate” as a current verified game activity (via either Hex-side mitigation or an upstream Discord correction).
• If Windows packaging changes, verify clean installs, in-place updates, auto-start, shortcuts, signing, and update/rollback behavior.
• If only Discord can fix it, document the status and a tested temporary mitigation.

Thanks for looking into it. I recognize this may ultimately be outside Hex's control, but it's a noticeable collision worth tracking with the Windows beta now available.

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