In recent weeks, titles such asPalworldandHelldivers 2have found monumental success onSteam. The result of this has led to fake versions of both games appearing on the platform in an attempt to scam users out of their money. Whether it’s through a hefty discounted price, or just hoping that players won’t look too deep into the listing, scammers are making Valve look like amateurs.
It wasn’t just Helldivers 2 and Palworld that were hit with scams either,Escape From Tarkov,Last Epoch, and a ‘Prime Status Upgrade’ bundle forCounter-Strike 2all received fake store pages. While these fake listings are no longer available to view on Steam, you’re able to see the evidence of their existencevia SteamDB.
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Bucky, who is the Community Manager for Pocketpair (the studio behind breakout hit, Palworld),said on Xthat the “wave of fake games that suddenly appeared on Steam today is quite concerning,” but noted that Steam immediately took down the fake Palworld listing as soon as Pocketpair made them aware of it. But how did this happen in the first place?
How Are These Fake Steam Games Happening?
If you didn’t know what to look for, it would be easy to fall for these scam listings. And as Valve has yet to make any official comment on the matter, there’s no way to know for certain how this is being pulled off. But YouTuber fireb0rn has an incrediblyinformative videoon how it all likely went down.
It appears as though the recent wave of fake games were all accomplished by a single individual. After creating a bunch of games on November 4th, 2023, the individual then renamed vital information, such as the publisher, developer, and game name, to prominent studios and video games. But the one thing that nobody seems to have the answer to: why does Valve even allow you to change your game title, publisher name, developer name, and more without being reviewed first? Better yet, why is it even possible to rename to something that already exists in the store?
Take Helldivers 2, for example, if you head to thefake game’s SteamDB page, you can see that it is now listed as fake and is no longer available on the Steam store. However, you can still see all of the game’s data from before it was taken down. While the developer, publisher, and image are perfectly replicating the official Helldivers 2, the original name of the app is ‘Figurality’, an unknown indie game.
How To Spot A Fake Game On Steam
Thankfully, there are a few key signs to spotting a fake store listing on Steam. While Valve is quick to take down any bogus games, there’s no saying that this won’t happen again unless tighter restrictions are implemented by the studio.
For now, the best way to tell if a store listing is fake is via the reviews and the associated tags. I’ll continue using the fake listing for Helldivers 2 as an example, as it only had 36 reviews, while the actual Helldivers 2 has well over 165,000. Although all of the 36 reviews for the fake listing were positive, this is due to the scammer purchasing multiple copies on different accounts for a much cheaper price, merely to leave fake reviews to make the page appear legitimate.
As for the tags, the fake listing was tagged as ‘puzzle’, ‘education’, ‘arcade’, and a few more that make absolutely no sense for a third-person shooter like Helldivers 2.
Unfortunately, until Valve stops allowing people to rename the developer, publisher, and game name at will, the aforementioned methods are the only way to know for sure if a listing is fake or not.
DualShockers has contacted Valve for comment on the incident. We will be sure to update this story should we receive a response.
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