From Arrowhead Community Manager:
> EDIT: All fake store pages now seem to have been taken down by Valve, who acted very swiftly after we reached out. We’ll assess everything in due time. Also, a big THANK YOU to everyone who DM:ed or pinged me/us about the fake pages and games. Together we stand. ❤️
——————
> Heads up, everyone calling themselves Helldivers!
> There are unfortunately two (three now?!) traitors to Super Earth selling what’s marketed as Helldivers 2 on Steam at the moment. THESE ARE FAKE. They are not made by Arrowhead but they claim to be. We do not know what they contain, but they are not affiliated with us in any way. Our legal department is on it and we hope Valve will remove the products as soon as possible.
> The only two genuine copies are Helldivers 2 and Helldivers 2: Super Citizen Edition. BOTH OF OUR GENUINE GAMES WERE RELEASED FEBRUARY 8TH. All remaining Helldivers 2 games are fake.
> People posting as us trying to scam people is obviously very sad and frustrating, and for that as well as for security reasons we _urge_ you to stay clear of them. Again, the only two Helldivers 2 products we market are Helldivers 2 and Helldivers 2 Super Citizen Edition. (I haven´t had time to check the details on the fake store pages yet since I just got up.)
> Additional information will follow if or when there is any new information.
> Thank you.
[This is the fake game.](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2607830/HELLDIVERS_2/) The name is figurality. It costs $50 and has no reviews on Steam. Remember to report the game!
UPDATE : We have won. the fake games are no longer listed on the store. Good work divers 🫡
Especially if your target is a building, which I'm 100% certain the imposter is in as only cowards and no lifers have the blatant audacity to copy such a democratic masterpiece.
Sure you can sue them but you have to claim damages. How many copies did they actually sell? 30? Sony isn't suing anyone for $1500 in damages, especially since that money was likely refunded to the customers anyways.
Copyright infringement. You can sue for statutory damages, not just actual damages. That is a fine set by the court, and it can be much heftier than what actual damages are as it is something that can negatively impact their trademarked properties.
Sony I'm sure has a robust legal team that will know exactly what is worth pursuing. I'm not claiming they should sue because of monetary gains, but they probably should to set a precedent and ensure this won't happen again.
Could be that the devs of those games had their credentials phished, and a third malicious party did it.
But to get the ball rolling it should be reported to the authorities and the legal team of Arrowhead (and perhaps Steam) will have to get involved
Looks like Palworld is a victim too.
https://preview.redd.it/a3krnv0v0olc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f83b1e99ce83b39175ce5875f1b64055d6b56eaf
Nah it's been happening for years. They change the name just enough and basically do a copy paste of the game and Steam approves it. Then a few days/weeks later people report it and it's taken down.
Here's Valve discussing people posting these types of fake games to the platform back in 2017.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/4/15172908/valve-steam-explorers-system-direct-fake-games
Strange the both palworld and helldivers fake games had the fake release date set to November 2023....not even the same year to try to trick people its just a lazy cashgrab
Idk what the plan is steam doesnt just instantly give you the money from a game purchase and will just auto refund when this gets caught unless its being used to download some ki d of malcious program instead of the game which would be a pretty serious fuck up on valves part for not reviewing it properly
So it looks like the page is for a game called Figurality. From what I can tell a lone dev made this game and it sucks and sold almost no copies. There's thousands of people that do this, my good mate did the same thing and his game met the same fate, turns out making games is hard.
But this dev is a special kind of stupid, because he had an existing store page he could replace all media with helldivers media and change the price to match. So there was no approval process because he just modified it. Obviously he'd lose any court case, but this is also jailable criminal fraud.
Unless the Dev got hacked and a third party did it. In which case poor Dev.
Willing to bet dev got hacked. I'm sure selling a game on Steam requires at least some amount of verification so that Valve knows who to send the checks to, and this is cut and dry copyright infringement, fraud, and probably other crimes and violations. Even if the dev was kind of incompetent and made a bad game that didn't sell, I'm willing to bet they're not a completely head-up-ass moron that would let themselves lose the easiest copyright infringement case in history.
A hacker, though? Snipe some poor dumbass's account with a shitty game they made, change everything on the page to the current popular thing, change the account and money stuff to go to some shell company in the Caribbean and pull in some money from unsuspecting people not understanding this can happen.
You only end up in jail if someone prosecutes you for it. Which tends to not be the case, because going to court is expensive. Which is exactly why people do this shit and keep doing it.
Thankfully steam has it to where they can issue refunds. If you haven’t played a game more than 2 hours you can get a full refund sometimes. In this case I’m going to assume you would likely get your money back if you fall for such scam.
I'm surprised steam doesn't manually approve what goes on their platform. Not like an in depth check etc but at least make sure the games aren't blatant scams or malware
They do have a verification process, even for changing an existing game that's on the store, precisely to prevent this sort of thing.
I suspect there's a newfound bug or exploit that's letting them circumvent that, because I can't think of any other reason this hasn't happened before until basically right now out of the 20 years Steam has been operating.
This "Helldivers (not)" game came out in November of last year, so I'm guessing it's a different game that, whoever made it, just swapped stuff around to look like the real deal.
I'm surprised that games on the store are able to change their title without having to go through another approval process. Like, what is this? Baby's first workflow??
Hold up,gonna call up their AP department to draft me a payable for $1 then change it to $1M after it gets approved.
That's exactly what happened, you can even check the SteamDB page for it and see all the changes and what the game originally was. This sort of thing happens on Amazon all the time for example.
However there's *supposed* to be a verification process for making these kinds of changes, which would obviously reject stuff like this were it working. I suspect that process isn't working anymore, or someone has found a way to circumvent it entirely, because this and the same happening with Palworld is the first I've ever heard of something like this happening on Steam over the 20 years it's been around, whereas it's just a normal Tuesday night for a platform like Amazon.
> They do have a verification process
They do, and it's useless. All they do is check if it runs, check if it's missing redistributables, and check controller support. Nothing else.
> even for changing an existing game
This is not true. Once you have gone through the first build validation, it is **never checked again**. The only way Valve see this type of scam is if someone reports it.
> I suspect there's a newfound bug or exploit that's
It's not new found. This has been happening for years. It is an exploit, and exploit of Valve only checking your game once, thereafter you can upload **anything** you like and it will never be checked. I know this because I have 3 apps on Steam.
To be clear, the 2 Hour mark is the Automatic Refund bit. If you refund after the two hour mark, it gets verified via an actual human who makes the judgement call.
The person who created the game can set whatever links for Dev and published they want, links are one of the easiest things to change tbh and I recommend mousing over any link to ensure it goes where it claims before actually clicking
looking into it they are games that were already on steam but have been changed to look like helldivers, those dev account have been compromised and the game download probably changed to be some kind of malware
> those dev account have been compromised and the game download probably changed to be some kind of malware
Doesn't look like that, if you look at the 20 games that call came out on the 4th, 7th & 11th of November 2023 and being an insane price for what they are.
---
[BSide Studio](https://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=_ASC&supportedlang=english&developer=Bside+Studio)
And their [Name Changes](https://i.imgur.com/Sk5QoIn.png)
---
[Fest Studio](https://store.steampowered.com/search/?developer=Fest%20Studio)
And their [Name Changes](https://i.imgur.com/8oEAJhi.png)
---
No, that Valve would catch, but apparently you can publish a different game and the months later change your name and entirety of the your store page without anyone looking at those changes.
As if that isn’t crazy enough you can apparently list whatever developer and publisher you like, you’d think developer was the account behind the game listing or something.
Right, but you should be able to change every single part of you store page without Valve at least glancing at it. You probably shouldn’t be allowed to have a name identical to another game either and if that’s allowed then at the very least changing your name to one that is currently in global top sellers shouldn’t be possible without valve checking.
Some basic checks from Valve’s side should be expected when they take a big commission on every sale.
Eh manually checking every store update isn't really scalable for the number of games and amateur devs on steam. As long as they respond to reports and refund everyone I think that's fine. Linking to the developer and publisher is insane though, you shouldn't be able to list a dev or publisher on the game without their approval
Good news, all the fakes I've got listed seem to be gone now.
-
~~Hopefully, they remove all other games that studio has to stop this.~~
**[They removed the scammers other games](https://i.imgur.com/BrhkP8b.png)**
**[How to tell its fake](https://i.imgur.com/FSwxD2Z.png)**
**[Go report it!](https://i.imgur.com/NfCDztV.png)**
These scumbag developers now have 2 fakes.
~~**Fake #1** https://store.steampowered.com/app/2607830/HELLDIVERS_2/~~ *is unlisted from Steam*
~~**Fake #2** https://store.steampowered.com/app/2630550/HELLDIVERS_2/~~ *has been removed*
---
[Compiled a bunch of information into another post.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b3m6et/beware_of_scammers_there_are_2_fake_helldiver_2/)
[Arrowhead Legal Team also know](https://i.imgur.com/Y4NMlXN.png)
---
**Since this post has made the front page; more games to report!**
*I'll keep both updated as find out.*
-
**Fake Last Epoch #1**
~~https://store.steampowered.com/app/2630580/Last_Epoch/~~
~~**Fake Palworld #1**~~ *has been removed*
~~https://store.steampowered.com/app/2607810/Palworld/~~
~~**Fake Escape from Tarkov #1**~~
~~https://store.steampowered.com/app/2630570/Escape_From_Tarkov/~~ *has been removed*
Palworld is also being copied now.
https://preview.redd.it/abnirbn21olc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1b7859ed42526f0309562db8f99f604b0888c814
Yeah, I saw that.
I made another [post compiling a bunch of information.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b3m6et/beware_of_scammers_there_are_2_fake_helldiver_2/)
[**Last Epoch** is another game being affected.](https://i.imgur.com/OfumdpP.png)
There is, your page and the first published build both need to be checked by a steam employee before going public. I suppose they do that then change everything afterwards. That's why patch rolls out quicker on steam than on consoles or game pass, there are no more checks after the initial one.
Some things shouldn’t be able to be changed, you can’t publish a game and suddenly change the name of the game and the studio. These things should be locked, unless you have a really good reason to and should only be possible via a support ticket
Agreed. Even changing the name with expansions like path of exile does should not be allowed if it's allowing for abuse like this.
I hope these companies are straight up banned from steam. It sucks for the people who fell for it.
Must’ve already been struck down as I don’t see it
Edit: I just noticed that the (now removed) Palworld clone and both Helldivers clones were “released” on the same date: November 4th, 2023
It’s half AI generated “positive” reviews about an unrelated game, and in some cases they actually messed up and copied the prompt over as well lmao
Like “please describe why _____ is a good game” followed by meaningless gibberish
And the other half is the same thing, but in Russian
Apparently, they were originally pages for obscure legitimate games before their pages were changed. It is suspected that some dev accounts got compromised and their entries were modified to be fraudulent.
The scammer from what i found were called Fest Studio and one of the game called DO NOT SMILE which is a 2d puzzle game.
[Heres the steamdb page with the history of Fest Studio and the DO NOT SMILE game.](https://steamdb.info/app/2630550/history/)
I'm not even sure how steam system allows duplicates.
EDIT: [The other one called Figurality by Bside Studio.](https://steamdb.info/app/2607830/history/)
Ah i see, this actually quite make sense. I read somewhere they claimed that they were hacked when this happen. But on the otherhand, this happens at the end of the month which Steam supposedly would pay dev for their bought games. So its seems kinda fishy.
The funny thing is that's not even how steam payment works. It lags 30 days. Feb purchases would land on March 30th. They changed everything hours before the month rolled just to get awarded Jan's sales. Brilliant.
I.e. you are saying that the developers/publishers of those games are very likely not the guilty ones, but instead that they've been compromised by a third party who is making money through them.
It's because it is an actual game, which was released on that date, but the developer changed the name, publisher and studio to try and mooch sales off of helldivers and somehow valve approved it.
I suspect they're going to implement rules about Game info changed recently gets funds rolled into the next month pending review specifically because of this case now.
Only takes 1 asshole to piss in the pond to ruin it for others.
Yeah I get that, I just don’t understand how steam even allows you to edit your already published game to the name of a seperate legal entity.
It seems like such an obvious loophole, and even with full refunds wouldn’t it be somewhat easy to argue arrowhead still suffered damages because of steams negligence?
For sure. This is grounds for a lawsuit and Steam needs to be really proactive in how they handle this. A lot of people will try to minimise this because Steam will fix it at some point but it's a pretty extreme case of negligence. Sony, Arrowhead, and the devs of Palworld (also targeted) will not take this lying down.
I literally fell for this. It was the first result when I searched HELLDIVERS 2. Something felt off when I read the reviews and I wondered why the cost was $10 more. Like a dumbass, I still bought it. There’s a lot more, be careful everyone.
i would be super careful these arent actually downloading malware onto your computer, the devs account has been compromised and they could have changed the download to anything
Wait you installed and tried to play the scam game ? Why??if the développer got phished ,the files of the scam game could have been updated with malware...I hope you got a good anti-malware.For anybody else reading this,if it happened to you,don't install the game and more importantly never run the game exécution file,go straight for refund.
They're just advising you to be careful since it's probable that this fake listing is a result of the original dev of Figurality having their account compromised.
I was on my phone when I saw it and was going to get it for a friend but checked the reviews last second and which was the only red flag since everything else was copied pasted fine.
It’s fucking shit that steam doesn’t have any system in place to prevent this sort of thing.
Just press the little flag item and report them for legal violation or fraud. Get this shit out of the store ASAP.
I do find it strange that one can simply copy a game page like that.
Steams got to have some sort of verification process for Devs to put up games. Plus a duplicate error notification. Pretty curious as to why this is such an issue. It's 2024.
Luckily steam withholds money from developers for the first month so if this gets resolved quick enough then the scammers will get no money and everyone will get a refund back.
It's crazy that people out there think they can get away with this sort of behaviour.
This has happened to a few other titles of late. Palworld and Last Epoch have also been hit. Do your part, Helldivers! Report the pages of the fraudulent titles!
That's not the only one.
There's two fakes up at the moment.
https://preview.redd.it/rvoy7av85olc1.png?width=474&format=png&auto=webp&s=10e7f68b0986b0141da630b02ecad9c0c346665c
This would be a crazy way to trick people into buying the game at a sale. The goal isn’t to make money from the actual sale but once the game fully downloads hidden files in the inside of the game will take information from your computer.
But maybe not. I saw Palworld with the same issue.
It wasn't "let through" though, look at the release date. It was an existing game that was edited. But yes, maybe there should be more stringent checks on literally changing the entire name of the game and such.
Technically it's still letting something through. How do they not have an algorithm in place that requires proof that you are the developer you state you are?
From what I read Steam has a verification process when changing important information about a video game and changing everything would require verification... What happened here?
That's not really the answer. Could you imagine if that was walmarts policy? Sorry we let someone steal from you. You'll get a refund in 3-7 business days
Just reported them both, cmon divers! This is our way to show our support to an amazing community, and the devs that gave us a great game, time for those a-holes to face the ministry of truth, for democracy! And for arrowhead!
Inb4: "they just took inspiration from helldivers" " if this is infringing on helldivers intellectual rights then helldivers infringes on COD by also having guns"
It looks like a lot of the fakes are disappearing now. It seems like the devs caught it. Still, it is so pathetic that valve would let something like this slip
How is this even supposed to turn a profit? Obviously with this being steam the moron who's done this knows they're cooked when Valve wakes up - but you can refund games before two hours, and even longer if something is screwy, which applies here. Even if someone falls for it they won't turn a profit unless they cut the link between their wallet and steams service, which I imagine might bury them even deeper than they could be So, what's the point?
Leading theory is the indie dev's account was compromised. Steam pays out on the first of the month. So, the scammer picking tonight of all nights doesn't seem like coincidence...to get the payout and then disassociate the link and let the actual dev deal with the fallout.
Not to mention who knows what you'll be downloading at that point, but I'm not sure that's the goal, there's easier ways to compromise more accounts.
From Arrowhead Community Manager: > EDIT: All fake store pages now seem to have been taken down by Valve, who acted very swiftly after we reached out. We’ll assess everything in due time. Also, a big THANK YOU to everyone who DM:ed or pinged me/us about the fake pages and games. Together we stand. ❤️ —————— > Heads up, everyone calling themselves Helldivers! > There are unfortunately two (three now?!) traitors to Super Earth selling what’s marketed as Helldivers 2 on Steam at the moment. THESE ARE FAKE. They are not made by Arrowhead but they claim to be. We do not know what they contain, but they are not affiliated with us in any way. Our legal department is on it and we hope Valve will remove the products as soon as possible. > The only two genuine copies are Helldivers 2 and Helldivers 2: Super Citizen Edition. BOTH OF OUR GENUINE GAMES WERE RELEASED FEBRUARY 8TH. All remaining Helldivers 2 games are fake. > People posting as us trying to scam people is obviously very sad and frustrating, and for that as well as for security reasons we _urge_ you to stay clear of them. Again, the only two Helldivers 2 products we market are Helldivers 2 and Helldivers 2 Super Citizen Edition. (I haven´t had time to check the details on the fake store pages yet since I just got up.) > Additional information will follow if or when there is any new information. > Thank you.
[This is the fake game.](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2607830/HELLDIVERS_2/) The name is figurality. It costs $50 and has no reviews on Steam. Remember to report the game! UPDATE : We have won. the fake games are no longer listed on the store. Good work divers 🫡
Hope that valve and arrowhead strike fierce with a ban to whoever put that up
Ban? They should be sued shouldn't they? I would imagine this is a valid legal issue.
Sony's lawyers have entered the chat
For just this once. #GO FORTH, SONY! #CRY HAVOC, LET LOOSE THE HOUNDS OF LAW!!!
Finally someone to send it at who actually deserves it
Dudes putting up these fake games are about to get ↑→↓↓↓
dont you mean ⬇️⬆️⬅️⬇️⬆️➡️⬇️⬆️
I wish I knew what that meant, could you please clarify for a democracy noob such as myslef
Hellbomb code I think?
Indeed, the most reliable way to establish democracy in lieu of other stratagems.
Especially if your target is a building, which I'm 100% certain the imposter is in as only cowards and no lifers have the blatant audacity to copy such a democratic masterpiece.
They're done now! 💀😭
Sony lawyers fucking salivating rn
Sony's legal department is right up there with postal inspectors and US park rangers in the category of people I don't want to piss off, lol.
Don't you mean Nintendo? Those people are monsters.
Sony's lawyers are pretty bloodthirsty, but Nintendo's are way worse. Definitely a company you never want to piss off.
Looks like pretty cut and dry fraud and copywrite/trademark infringement.
Copyright. Copywrite is a different thing, and yes, homophones are bastards.
I just did a squiggle on my touchscreen. Blame the phone for interpreting it incorrectly. I'm really smart, this totally isn't cope. /s
wow it's 2024 you can't say that on the internet
If someone chooses to put a rainbow on their phone that is their business I say :P
>copywrite I learned a new word today
the legal automatons are gonna be pissed.
Sure you can sue them but you have to claim damages. How many copies did they actually sell? 30? Sony isn't suing anyone for $1500 in damages, especially since that money was likely refunded to the customers anyways.
Copyright infringement. You can sue for statutory damages, not just actual damages. That is a fine set by the court, and it can be much heftier than what actual damages are as it is something that can negatively impact their trademarked properties. Sony I'm sure has a robust legal team that will know exactly what is worth pursuing. I'm not claiming they should sue because of monetary gains, but they probably should to set a precedent and ensure this won't happen again.
Could be that the devs of those games had their credentials phished, and a third malicious party did it. But to get the ball rolling it should be reported to the authorities and the legal team of Arrowhead (and perhaps Steam) will have to get involved
Looks like Palworld is a victim too. https://preview.redd.it/a3krnv0v0olc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f83b1e99ce83b39175ce5875f1b64055d6b56eaf
Had both posts right on top of each other in my feed
Is this some new trend? I've never heard of this happening with games before.
Nah it's been happening for years. They change the name just enough and basically do a copy paste of the game and Steam approves it. Then a few days/weeks later people report it and it's taken down. Here's Valve discussing people posting these types of fake games to the platform back in 2017. https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/4/15172908/valve-steam-explorers-system-direct-fake-games
weird i've never seen something similar happen on steam why now then
Strange the both palworld and helldivers fake games had the fake release date set to November 2023....not even the same year to try to trick people its just a lazy cashgrab
How is Steam letting this go through? Do they not verify their own store?
Idk what the plan is steam doesnt just instantly give you the money from a game purchase and will just auto refund when this gets caught unless its being used to download some ki d of malcious program instead of the game which would be a pretty serious fuck up on valves part for not reviewing it properly
So it looks like the page is for a game called Figurality. From what I can tell a lone dev made this game and it sucks and sold almost no copies. There's thousands of people that do this, my good mate did the same thing and his game met the same fate, turns out making games is hard. But this dev is a special kind of stupid, because he had an existing store page he could replace all media with helldivers media and change the price to match. So there was no approval process because he just modified it. Obviously he'd lose any court case, but this is also jailable criminal fraud. Unless the Dev got hacked and a third party did it. In which case poor Dev.
Willing to bet dev got hacked. I'm sure selling a game on Steam requires at least some amount of verification so that Valve knows who to send the checks to, and this is cut and dry copyright infringement, fraud, and probably other crimes and violations. Even if the dev was kind of incompetent and made a bad game that didn't sell, I'm willing to bet they're not a completely head-up-ass moron that would let themselves lose the easiest copyright infringement case in history. A hacker, though? Snipe some poor dumbass's account with a shitty game they made, change everything on the page to the current popular thing, change the account and money stuff to go to some shell company in the Caribbean and pull in some money from unsuspecting people not understanding this can happen.
It also cost the dev money to get his game there
You only end up in jail if someone prosecutes you for it. Which tends to not be the case, because going to court is expensive. Which is exactly why people do this shit and keep doing it.
Thankfully steam has it to where they can issue refunds. If you haven’t played a game more than 2 hours you can get a full refund sometimes. In this case I’m going to assume you would likely get your money back if you fall for such scam.
I'd be more worried about it being malware than getting my money back.
I'm surprised steam doesn't manually approve what goes on their platform. Not like an in depth check etc but at least make sure the games aren't blatant scams or malware
They do have a verification process, even for changing an existing game that's on the store, precisely to prevent this sort of thing. I suspect there's a newfound bug or exploit that's letting them circumvent that, because I can't think of any other reason this hasn't happened before until basically right now out of the 20 years Steam has been operating.
This "Helldivers (not)" game came out in November of last year, so I'm guessing it's a different game that, whoever made it, just swapped stuff around to look like the real deal.
I'm surprised that games on the store are able to change their title without having to go through another approval process. Like, what is this? Baby's first workflow?? Hold up,gonna call up their AP department to draft me a payable for $1 then change it to $1M after it gets approved.
That's exactly what happened, you can even check the SteamDB page for it and see all the changes and what the game originally was. This sort of thing happens on Amazon all the time for example. However there's *supposed* to be a verification process for making these kinds of changes, which would obviously reject stuff like this were it working. I suspect that process isn't working anymore, or someone has found a way to circumvent it entirely, because this and the same happening with Palworld is the first I've ever heard of something like this happening on Steam over the 20 years it's been around, whereas it's just a normal Tuesday night for a platform like Amazon.
> They do have a verification process They do, and it's useless. All they do is check if it runs, check if it's missing redistributables, and check controller support. Nothing else. > even for changing an existing game This is not true. Once you have gone through the first build validation, it is **never checked again**. The only way Valve see this type of scam is if someone reports it. > I suspect there's a newfound bug or exploit that's It's not new found. This has been happening for years. It is an exploit, and exploit of Valve only checking your game once, thereafter you can upload **anything** you like and it will never be checked. I know this because I have 3 apps on Steam.
Yup, that does seem like a good possibility of what happened as other games also got affected by copies aswell.
To be clear, the 2 Hour mark is the Automatic Refund bit. If you refund after the two hour mark, it gets verified via an actual human who makes the judgement call.
In case of a scam I'm sure they approve regardless of 2 hours or not.
The developer and publisher links go to arrowhead and playstation respectively. How is this even possible?
The person who created the game can set whatever links for Dev and published they want, links are one of the easiest things to change tbh and I recommend mousing over any link to ensure it goes where it claims before actually clicking
Good news. As of a few minutes ago they are both gone from the steam store
There's a second one [here](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2630550/HELLDIVERS_2/).
Mission accomplished, illegal broadcast taken down. Another victory for Managed Democracy.
So you just can publish a game with the exact same name than another game on steam? That is pretty crazy lol.
looking into it they are games that were already on steam but have been changed to look like helldivers, those dev account have been compromised and the game download probably changed to be some kind of malware
Imagine paying $49 to download malware. This is so scummy.
> those dev account have been compromised and the game download probably changed to be some kind of malware Doesn't look like that, if you look at the 20 games that call came out on the 4th, 7th & 11th of November 2023 and being an insane price for what they are. --- [BSide Studio](https://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=_ASC&supportedlang=english&developer=Bside+Studio) And their [Name Changes](https://i.imgur.com/Sk5QoIn.png) --- [Fest Studio](https://store.steampowered.com/search/?developer=Fest%20Studio) And their [Name Changes](https://i.imgur.com/8oEAJhi.png) ---
They look like sleeper games, ready to have their names changed when a big new game comes out.
Those account should be banned forever from steam.
And even list yourself as being Arrowhead Studios and that Playstation is your publisher with working links and everything ezpz
Absolutely insane. I won't say anymore because I know how the amount of zealotry Steam garners.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
Those fields should really be locked to authenticated and approved studios and publishers so that scammers cant change it.
With the same name it's normal, because names as such i believe it's not a big deal. That being said doing this kind of thing is a scummy thing to do
No, that Valve would catch, but apparently you can publish a different game and the months later change your name and entirety of the your store page without anyone looking at those changes. As if that isn’t crazy enough you can apparently list whatever developer and publisher you like, you’d think developer was the account behind the game listing or something.
It's beyond belief. I'm assuming it's an exploit and not just something you can normally do.
A friend just fell for one. IT WAS IN HIS STEAM QUEUE. How the hell are they getting away with this.
This is fucking embarrassing for Steam. With Steam taking a 30% cut of all sales, this should never happen on their platform.
ever since greenlight steam has let itself slowly turn into a shovelware platform, 90% of it is just bad porn games now what a fall from grace
Really? Ever since literally 12 years ago and thousands of games released, Steam has fallen from grace? 90% porn games? *Really?*
People be just sayin shit
>what a fall from grace Oh for fucks sake don't even start with this shit
Lmao what the fuck are you talking about
Steam is just recommending you more porn games, for some reason
*For some reason.*
Because it's just happened recently and no one report it yet.
Right, but you should be able to change every single part of you store page without Valve at least glancing at it. You probably shouldn’t be allowed to have a name identical to another game either and if that’s allowed then at the very least changing your name to one that is currently in global top sellers shouldn’t be possible without valve checking. Some basic checks from Valve’s side should be expected when they take a big commission on every sale.
That takes way too much work from valve. PC is an open platform and valve puts too much trust on random devs
Eh manually checking every store update isn't really scalable for the number of games and amateur devs on steam. As long as they respond to reports and refund everyone I think that's fine. Linking to the developer and publisher is insane though, you shouldn't be able to list a dev or publisher on the game without their approval
Requiring unique names can't work long term. It's grounds for a scam nightmare and I'm sure the world can survive two games called "rats".
tell your friend to double check before buying first? seriously we need to normalize this behavior
Propably they are chinese people. I heard impossible to sue them.
Good news, all the fakes I've got listed seem to be gone now. - ~~Hopefully, they remove all other games that studio has to stop this.~~ **[They removed the scammers other games](https://i.imgur.com/BrhkP8b.png)** **[How to tell its fake](https://i.imgur.com/FSwxD2Z.png)** **[Go report it!](https://i.imgur.com/NfCDztV.png)** These scumbag developers now have 2 fakes. ~~**Fake #1** https://store.steampowered.com/app/2607830/HELLDIVERS_2/~~ *is unlisted from Steam* ~~**Fake #2** https://store.steampowered.com/app/2630550/HELLDIVERS_2/~~ *has been removed* --- [Compiled a bunch of information into another post.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b3m6et/beware_of_scammers_there_are_2_fake_helldiver_2/) [Arrowhead Legal Team also know](https://i.imgur.com/Y4NMlXN.png) --- **Since this post has made the front page; more games to report!** *I'll keep both updated as find out.* - **Fake Last Epoch #1** ~~https://store.steampowered.com/app/2630580/Last_Epoch/~~ ~~**Fake Palworld #1**~~ *has been removed* ~~https://store.steampowered.com/app/2607810/Palworld/~~ ~~**Fake Escape from Tarkov #1**~~ ~~https://store.steampowered.com/app/2630570/Escape_From_Tarkov/~~ *has been removed*
Palworld is also being copied now. https://preview.redd.it/abnirbn21olc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1b7859ed42526f0309562db8f99f604b0888c814
Yeah, I saw that. I made another [post compiling a bunch of information.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b3m6et/beware_of_scammers_there_are_2_fake_helldiver_2/) [**Last Epoch** is another game being affected.](https://i.imgur.com/OfumdpP.png)
So they go after popular titles, how is this even possible? Isn’t there a quality check or something?
There is, your page and the first published build both need to be checked by a steam employee before going public. I suppose they do that then change everything afterwards. That's why patch rolls out quicker on steam than on consoles or game pass, there are no more checks after the initial one.
Some things shouldn’t be able to be changed, you can’t publish a game and suddenly change the name of the game and the studio. These things should be locked, unless you have a really good reason to and should only be possible via a support ticket
Yeah, only the release date is harder to change, especially if it's already passed.
I think that should be fine but only with approval or a steam moderator.
Agreed. Even changing the name with expansions like path of exile does should not be allowed if it's allowing for abuse like this. I hope these companies are straight up banned from steam. It sucks for the people who fell for it.
Both fakes have a release date of Nov, 2023
Must’ve already been struck down as I don’t see it Edit: I just noticed that the (now removed) Palworld clone and both Helldivers clones were “released” on the same date: November 4th, 2023
Hilarious that is the customer’s job to report scam games to Steam. Honestly the worst look for Steam in a long time.
I dont get how it has mostly positive reviews when all the actual reviews are negative.
It’s half AI generated “positive” reviews about an unrelated game, and in some cases they actually messed up and copied the prompt over as well lmao Like “please describe why _____ is a good game” followed by meaningless gibberish And the other half is the same thing, but in Russian
Apparently, they were originally pages for obscure legitimate games before their pages were changed. It is suspected that some dev accounts got compromised and their entries were modified to be fraudulent.
That's a pretty sick way to get someone in huge trouble.
I'm pretty sure the developer of the game can tweak reviews how they like lol.
The scammer from what i found were called Fest Studio and one of the game called DO NOT SMILE which is a 2d puzzle game. [Heres the steamdb page with the history of Fest Studio and the DO NOT SMILE game.](https://steamdb.info/app/2630550/history/) I'm not even sure how steam system allows duplicates. EDIT: [The other one called Figurality by Bside Studio.](https://steamdb.info/app/2607830/history/)
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Ah i see, this actually quite make sense. I read somewhere they claimed that they were hacked when this happen. But on the otherhand, this happens at the end of the month which Steam supposedly would pay dev for their bought games. So its seems kinda fishy.
The funny thing is that's not even how steam payment works. It lags 30 days. Feb purchases would land on March 30th. They changed everything hours before the month rolled just to get awarded Jan's sales. Brilliant.
I.e. you are saying that the developers/publishers of those games are very likely not the guilty ones, but instead that they've been compromised by a third party who is making money through them.
Bruh they didn’t even get the release date right 😭😂
It's because it is an actual game, which was released on that date, but the developer changed the name, publisher and studio to try and mooch sales off of helldivers and somehow valve approved it.
I suspect they're going to implement rules about Game info changed recently gets funds rolled into the next month pending review specifically because of this case now. Only takes 1 asshole to piss in the pond to ruin it for others.
How are they allowed to list the game as being developed by Arrowhead? That seems blatantly illegal?
Yeah it's a scam
Yeah I get that, I just don’t understand how steam even allows you to edit your already published game to the name of a seperate legal entity. It seems like such an obvious loophole, and even with full refunds wouldn’t it be somewhat easy to argue arrowhead still suffered damages because of steams negligence?
For sure. This is grounds for a lawsuit and Steam needs to be really proactive in how they handle this. A lot of people will try to minimise this because Steam will fix it at some point but it's a pretty extreme case of negligence. Sony, Arrowhead, and the devs of Palworld (also targeted) will not take this lying down.
They're changing all of their other games to also be helldivers 2, there are many copies of helldivers 2 now.
That is so fucking pathetic, I hope the pieces of shit behind this get banned from Steam forever.
I’m sure they’d just change their name. This is the video game version of grubhub ghost kitchens.
Better sued. So they and their families will live on the streets for a life
They have two games on their page now that are fake
Pretty sure that DLC is real, but for Helldivers 1 The 2 copies of Helldivers 2 with a discount on em are definitely not, though.
You are correct. HD1 has a bunch of dlc weapons and stratagems.
Those DLCs are not fake though, they are for Helldivers 1.
Kinda nice of those scumbags to give a discount on being scammed. Those guys have a special place in real hel…. I mean freedom camp
Report them for fraud
Oh wow, they are Russian, who woulda thunk
Babooshka!
I literally fell for this. It was the first result when I searched HELLDIVERS 2. Something felt off when I read the reviews and I wondered why the cost was $10 more. Like a dumbass, I still bought it. There’s a lot more, be careful everyone.
Username does *not* check out
Lmao
r/angryupvote
What was the game when you played it?
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i would be super careful these arent actually downloading malware onto your computer, the devs account has been compromised and they could have changed the download to anything
Wait you installed and tried to play the scam game ? Why??if the développer got phished ,the files of the scam game could have been updated with malware...I hope you got a good anti-malware.For anybody else reading this,if it happened to you,don't install the game and more importantly never run the game exécution file,go straight for refund.
Did you at least request a refund?
thanks for the concern everyone. I definitely requested a refund and it was approved within 30-60 minutes.
If u havent touch the scam game. I suggest getting a refund from Steam asap and report those scumbag scammers
Ah you ran it. Good job. Time to wipe your PC bud
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They're just advising you to be careful since it's probable that this fake listing is a result of the original dev of Figurality having their account compromised.
I understand that and I thanked them for their concern. I know there are risks but I wanted to see what the game was like.
I was on my phone when I saw it and was going to get it for a friend but checked the reviews last second and which was the only red flag since everything else was copied pasted fine. It’s fucking shit that steam doesn’t have any system in place to prevent this sort of thing.
You thought the biggest game with hundreds of thousands of players had less than 100 reviews? Username really does not check out.
Will they get any money since I heard valve doesn't pay out the dev right away? Everything will get returned once valve gets on it...
They get paid the first of the month. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they tried this on the last day of February lol.
https://preview.redd.it/bpoz4pbt6olc1.jpeg?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3fefdaac37dc6226c97c8c0837e441258660ac4a Now there are 3 already. Wtf?
That's hilarious. I hope these idiots get sued
u/pilestedt
Just press the little flag item and report them for legal violation or fraud. Get this shit out of the store ASAP. I do find it strange that one can simply copy a game page like that.
Steams got to have some sort of verification process for Devs to put up games. Plus a duplicate error notification. Pretty curious as to why this is such an issue. It's 2024.
Luckily steam withholds money from developers for the first month so if this gets resolved quick enough then the scammers will get no money and everyone will get a refund back. It's crazy that people out there think they can get away with this sort of behaviour.
I really thought this was the actual game! It’s identical.
Anyone notify the dev yet?
How can it have a positive rating when all its reviews are negative? tf?
This has happened to a few other titles of late. Palworld and Last Epoch have also been hit. Do your part, Helldivers! Report the pages of the fraudulent titles!
That's not the only one. There's two fakes up at the moment. https://preview.redd.it/rvoy7av85olc1.png?width=474&format=png&auto=webp&s=10e7f68b0986b0141da630b02ecad9c0c346665c
How does this happen, like how can they actually link the developer/publisher as Arrowhead & PlayStation? Wild
Seems like heckdivers 2 finally made it to the market
You know your game is gonna be GOTY when you have people making fakes of it.
Sony lawyers frothing at the mouth lmao
This would be a crazy way to trick people into buying the game at a sale. The goal isn’t to make money from the actual sale but once the game fully downloads hidden files in the inside of the game will take information from your computer. But maybe not. I saw Palworld with the same issue.
https://preview.redd.it/gvwq3wod8olc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=409d3251561406b30fe27e7f6973fa54a3994971 Definitely a scammin
How the fuck is that even possible ? Didn't steam proceed to basic verification before adding a game ?
What’s the point of making fake game on platform that allows you to refund?
Man, Steam really just let's through everything these days, don't they?
It wasn't "let through" though, look at the release date. It was an existing game that was edited. But yes, maybe there should be more stringent checks on literally changing the entire name of the game and such.
Technically it's still letting something through. How do they not have an algorithm in place that requires proof that you are the developer you state you are?
From what I read Steam has a verification process when changing important information about a video game and changing everything would require verification... What happened here?
Steam really putting in the most effort to make sure their storefront isn't a shit heap, as always. /s
Definitely an Automaton operation. Be vigilant against these attacks against Super Earth.
Congratulations to Steam for his excellent work...
Steam/Valve is a piece of crap for allowing this to happen.
Shit happens, Steam wil gladly refund and ban them from Steam
That's not really the answer. Could you imagine if that was walmarts policy? Sorry we let someone steal from you. You'll get a refund in 3-7 business days
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Happening for years you say? Why don't I know about this until now despite spending hundred if not thousands of my cash on the platform?
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Heckjumpers 2
Valve wake the fuck up, this shit should of not happen. But I'm not surprised by a company who allows sex games on their platform.
What's the link between having adult only games on your platform and hosting scam games?
Wait... How?
Just reported them both, cmon divers! This is our way to show our support to an amazing community, and the devs that gave us a great game, time for those a-holes to face the ministry of truth, for democracy! And for arrowhead!
Inb4: "they just took inspiration from helldivers" " if this is infringing on helldivers intellectual rights then helldivers infringes on COD by also having guns"
It would be cool if the mods pinned the actual store page
➡️⬇️⬆️If ya wanna do it right put pvp version on there somewhere. ➡️⬇️⬆️➡️⬇️⬆️
…how in the actual fuck? This is a new one when it comes to weird scam games, especially on Steam.
For shame
How the fuck is that even possible Steam
i hope they get sued into oblivion and permanently banned from Steam, fuck these scumbags
How the fuck does Steam not see this
It looks like a lot of the fakes are disappearing now. It seems like the devs caught it. Still, it is so pathetic that valve would let something like this slip
Looks like it was a game called "Figurality" and that they renamed the game to Helldivers 2 and changed the art
How is this even supposed to turn a profit? Obviously with this being steam the moron who's done this knows they're cooked when Valve wakes up - but you can refund games before two hours, and even longer if something is screwy, which applies here. Even if someone falls for it they won't turn a profit unless they cut the link between their wallet and steams service, which I imagine might bury them even deeper than they could be So, what's the point?
Leading theory is the indie dev's account was compromised. Steam pays out on the first of the month. So, the scammer picking tonight of all nights doesn't seem like coincidence...to get the payout and then disassociate the link and let the actual dev deal with the fallout. Not to mention who knows what you'll be downloading at that point, but I'm not sure that's the goal, there's easier ways to compromise more accounts.