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[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Two indie games on Steam were disguised as Helldivers 2 earlier today, to scam players into buying them.

News started spreading on social media that two duplicate copies of Helldivers 2 had appeared on Steam, selling at discounted prices of $12.49 and $19.99.

According to SteamDB, however, both games were actually existing indie games, with all their metadata changed by the developer to imitate the Arrowhead Game Studios hit.

SteamDB’s history shows that both games were edited at 11.50pm ET / 4.50am GMT, with their titles, descriptions, screenshots and even publisher and developer information changed to match those of the real Helldivers 2.

In reality, the games were Figurality by SoleOnBoard Studio and Do Not Smile by Whitehole Games. Given that both games were released on November 4 and both were changed today, it seems likely that both ‘developers’ are the same person.

One of the fake listings. The 13 reviews are the only way to tell the difference.

The games were been pulled from Steam as this article was being written, meaning they were up in their modified form for around three hours before they were spotted and delisted.

The fact they were even allowed to be changed, however, to the extent that the publisher name was able to be renamed ‘PlayStation PC LLC’ (and that clicking its name links to the legitimate PlayStation Steam page), will raise questions about how developers are able to do this on Steam.

Two indie Steam games were disguised as Helldivers 2 to scam players | VGC

There were briefly three identical-looking versions of the game on…

www.videogameschronicle.com

 

[SCB3]

I have to admit, thats pretty ingenious but whats the point, as soon as you install and realise its not the right game, you can refund it

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Very odd that this can even happen in the first place. Hopefully Valve will take measures to ensure that other scummy developers won't be able to pull off the same thing in the future

 

[tvdaXD]

Community manager on their Discord as of writing this reply;

EDITED March 1st, 08.29 CET
EDITED March 1st, 08.00 CET

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!

There are unfortunately two (three now?!) fake games being 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.

 

[GymWolf]

Socialist scum.

 

[Majukun]

isn't that due to fail given steam's refund policy?
it surely takes less than 2h to realize you are playing the wrong game.

this being said, for being the leader platform of the PC market, Steam's curation is laughable

 

[laynelane]

I have to admit, thats pretty ingenious but whats the point, as soon as you install and realise its not the right game, you can refund it

Maybe relying on people who buy games on deep sales, but don't necessarily play them right away? The game could be in their library beyond the refund limit in those cases.

 

[Zheph]

No safeguard against this? Steam Defense Team, whats up?

 

[SCB3]

isn't that due to fail given steam's refund policy?
it surely takes less than 2h to realize you are playing the wrong game.

this being said, for being the leader platform of the PC market, Steam's curation is laughable

I'm guessing that they recieve the money quickly and the refund has to go through Steam who then collect/bill the devs for the refund, so in theory you could get say 100 buyers, collect $20 from each and make off with $2000, and run away before Steam bills them for the refunds

 

[DGrayson]

How does Steam even let that happen?

 

[Elysium44]

That seems like a major loophole, which will now hopefully be closed.

 

[crackajack]

No safeguard against this?

I am also surprised that seemingly anyone can use xyz(tm) for their product in their database without owning the rights to it, at least a duplicate check should be automatic. Even pictures should not be able to appear willynilly on anything but the original game.

When reading the headline I thought some product called Heldiverz that has ai generated Helldiver-like screenshots was trying to scam people and not just blatantly stealing the name and screens. Mindboggling how bold and kinda lazy some people with criminal intent are.

 

[duck_sauce]

Considering the refund policy of steam....how much damage can the do?

I doubt that someone plays this for over 2 hours before realzing that it is not helldivers 2.

 

[IAmRei]

evil bastard, riding on people misunderstood :, (

 

[RoboFu]

And they got caught quickly and everybody gets refunded.

Not quite sure what these idiots were thinking really.

 

[Skifi28]

Can't blame a guy for trying.

 

[STARSBarry]

No safeguard against this? Steam Defense Team, whats up?

How does Steam even let that happen?

So here's the thing, steams been up 20 years? And for say 17 of those has had a shared store front that other people can sell games on.

This doesn't appear to have happened before in all that time of the platform and is likely a missed requirement. Modern day development is all Agile vs Waterfall, so you fix issues as they crop up, rather than plan for every eventuality within reason.

So prior to this steam obviously let people just make changes to their store listing. The benefits are obvious, no need for people to review, no accidental automated blocks that prevent people making a change when they release a big update etc, and it worked well for over a decade.

But now this user has just ruined that for everyone, for the developers in early access and live service who update often, and for Valve who I assume enjoyed not having to pay people to deal with all the false flags and reviews they will now need to do.

I actually had a very similair case recently where we have had the system working for 5 years, and finally just yesterday someone out of millions of users decided that they where going to purposefully ruin their account... no one accounted for that because the only thing that would happen would be a negative to the user. No one thought "why don't we restrict what they do, because otherwise they could destroy their own account and it would be unsalvagable"

Just how it is.

 

[skit_data]

Wtf, how is this even possible? Is this the first time something similar has happened? If it's this easy one would think it would be a regular occurance

 

[SCB3]

Modern day development is all Agile vs Waterfall, so you fix issues as they crop up, rather than plan for every eventuality within reason

Kinda, you do tend to plan for most outcomes as well before programming anything, or at least you should

Then again as you said, Steam been around since 2004 so this is just a case of its never come up before

 

[skit_data]

 

[STARSBarry]

Kinda, you do tend to plan for most outcomes as well before programming anything, or at least you should

Then again as you said, Steam been around since 2004 so this is just a case of its never come up before

Might be differences in how and where I work, but effectively people deliver MVP's sometimes knowing that potentially common eventuality's we have thought about are not accounted for. Then you prioritise further development based on the live data coming in showing which ones should be targeted first because their actually causing issues and blocking users.

But I can tottaly see this being missed given at least our style, and the meetings now happening where they dicuss how this one user doing this means everyone else from now on needs to be vetted... I don't envy them.

 

[Garibaldi]

Be right back. Just off to the official store page to write a fake review saying it's one of the scam offerings...

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

Modern problems require modern solutions!

The people who did this would make excellent politicians.

 

[Shakka43]

Considering the refund policy of steam....how much damage can the do?

I doubt that someone plays this for over 2 hours before realzing that it is not helldivers 2.

A bunch of people buy games just to add them to their backlog and play them in the future(I know this is less likely for multiplayer games like H2). Steam's refund policy also has a 14 days limit.

 

[justiceiro]

I can't even change my name on Facebook, but valve somehow let companies change their product name whenever they want, even if it's a name of some other game they already sell there.

Amazing QA, valve.

 

[SmokedMeat]

You shouldn’t be able to drastically change your entire listing to mimic another.

I’d imagine a giant red flag would be a complete lack of community photos, videos, discussion, and guides.

 

[N30RYU]

first Helldivers, 3 diferent versions

 

[alienator]

Every game is a helldiver

 

[crackajack]

everyone else from now on needs to be vetted... I don't envy them.

I am not a programmer, but this cannot be too hard to fix?
Very much like I can't name myself STARSBarry here, games should not be able to be renamed into anything that is already taken in the database. And I guess at least the major publishers should only be able to be written in there by specific accounts unlocked for that. I guess anyone can then still write "my game is similar and exactly as good as Helldivers" in the description box, but that would not be such an obvious trap. I think I saw some yt-video about some other languages letters can be coded with other very similar letters or whatnot, so you think you land at apple.com or whatever but are actually somewhere entirely else. No idea how many languages steam supports, game names are mostly english, maybe japanese, korean, cyrillic and chinese (and more???) and how many very similar letters are then active for such a trick. That might be a tougher nut to crack but I think ebay and antiphishing stuff must have solutions figured out for that too.

I'd also think with image search nowadays at least logos and screens from their very own database should not be legit to just steal unaltered.
None of that should require an actual person vetting anything. Just automatically refusing some taken existing inputs which might only result in some problem if an image search gives a false positive (no idea how accurate these can be) and only then some manual override might be needed.

 

[Alexios]

I bet it was a Tim Sweeney burner account trying to cause trouble again.

So here's the thing, steams been up 20 years? And for say 17 of those has had a shared store front that other people can sell games on.

This doesn't appear to have happened before in all that time of the platform and is likely a missed requirement. Modern day development is all Agile vs Waterfall, so you fix issues as they crop up, rather than plan for every eventuality within reason.

So prior to this steam obviously let people just make changes to their store listing. The benefits are obvious, no need for people to review, no accidental automated blocks that prevent people making a change when they release a big update etc, and it worked well for over a decade.

But now this user has just ruined that for everyone, for the developers in early access and live service who update often, and for Valve who I assume enjoyed not having to pay people to deal with all the false flags and reviews they will now need to do.

I actually had a very similair case recently where we have had the system working for 5 years, and finally just yesterday someone out of millions of users decided that they where going to purposefully ruin their account... no one accounted for that because the only thing that would happen would be a negative to the user. No one thought "why don't we restrict what they do, because otherwise they could destroy their own account and it would be unsalvagable"

Just how it is.

I don't think they'll change the policy over this, no real damage done in the end and the folks involved will not be able to do it again. It may have huge ramifications to make such changes, ie, every game would now have to go through thorough review to make sure the publisher owns all assets, IP, etc., it could cause huge delays/queues in releases when obviously the vast majority would not do anything like this, ever. Valve's not the only one and their policies already stop most such incidents, hence it's not quite the wild west of the google play store or similarly open to publishing platforms.

I'm guessing that they recieve the money quickly and the refund has to go through Steam who then collect/bill the devs for the refund, so in theory you could get say 100 buyers, collect $20 from each and make off with $2000, and run away before Steam bills them for the refunds

Steam generally pays 30 days after the end of each calendar month, provided the developer has earned a minimum of $100 in that month, or something along those lines. The've gotten some criticism for being slow on that front (seems perfectly fine to me).

 

[Magic Carpet]

Was this a form of account suicide on Steam? Did anyone give them gold and a laugh emoji?

 

[YCoCg]

Surely this is a surefire way to get the games publisher revoked on Steam?

 

[poppabk]

A bunch of people buy games just to add them to their backlog and play them in the future(I know this is less likely for multiplayer games like H2). Steam's refund policy also has a 14 days limit.

There is zero chance of this not being noticed though, so customers were always going to get refunded. Don't know how Steam pays out money for games being sold, but there is probably a miniscule chance of any money being paid out by Steam before this is discovered either.
So this is either a prank, a hack, or someone so insanely desperate that they didn't think things through.

 

[near]

The scammer is both smart and dumb at the same time. Smart for figuring out a way to duplicate a listing, incredibly dumb for thinking they could get away with it.

 

[mayham2199]

I have to admit, thats pretty ingenious but whats the point, as soon as you install and realise its not the right game, you can refund it

I don't even find it ingenious. I find it very odd that Valve has allowed a clear flaw like this to even exist in the first place. It's like calling your friend a hacker because he got into someone's PC who didn't even have a password on their account.

 

[yurinka]

wtf lol. Btw, Steam pays 2 months later to the devs, so this move is very stupid because obviously Valve was going to shut it down soon, sales were going to be refunded and devs weren't going to get anything from this.

 

[bender]

A bunch of people buy games just to add them to their backlog and play them in the future(I know this is less likely for multiplayer games like H2). Steam's refund policy also has a 14 days limit.

The nice thing about Valve is that they allow exceptions to their policies, especially when the game(s) in question are shady. That most recently happened with The Day Before and Valve forgoing the 2 hour policy for refunds. The person who got duped would have to notice though but I think the nature of this game would prevent it from getting buried too far in most people's backlog. That said, the best course of action would be to refund all purchases that happened after the game title updates.

 

[Ribi]

What's th process for changing names on steam? Surely they'd cross-check or something

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Someone has to to had fallen for it and will upload a snapshot of what game it is really is after they installed it and pressed Play! Please shamefully share!

 

[Guilty_AI]

I think this guy did a good job shedding light into the issue and how the scammer is actually profiting from all this - basically with the sale of his fake games on gray market websites as well as a with the sale of accounts with the fake games registered on them.

 

[Three]

So here's the thing, steams been up 20 years? And for say 17 of those has had a shared store front that other people can sell games on.

This doesn't appear to have happened before in all that time of the platform and is likely a missed requirement. Modern day development is all Agile vs Waterfall, so you fix issues as they crop up, rather than plan for every eventuality within reason.

So prior to this steam obviously let people just make changes to their store listing. The benefits are obvious, no need for people to review, no accidental automated blocks that prevent people making a change when they release a big update etc, and it worked well for over a decade.

But now this user has just ruined that for everyone, for the developers in early access and live service who update often, and for Valve who I assume enjoyed not having to pay people to deal with all the false flags and reviews they will now need to do.

I actually had a very similair case recently where we have had the system working for 5 years, and finally just yesterday someone out of millions of users decided that they where going to purposefully ruin their account... no one accounted for that because the only thing that would happen would be a negative to the user. No one thought "why don't we restrict what they do, because otherwise they could destroy their own account and it would be unsalvagable"

Just how it is.

It's a dumb oversight to let a developer change their developer studio name to somebody else's though without it being checked. There is little benefit to agility to be able to do that so that has little to no reason to exist.

This is probably bad for Helldivers 2 because people will fear getting scammed even on the original now. Maybe that was their intent considering the 2hr refund policy, or maybe they thought people just wouldn't notice they bought a fake. Who knows.

 

[SportsFan581]

I have to admit, thats pretty ingenious but whats the point, as soon as you install and realise its not the right game, you can refund it

I guess they were hoping that people would backlog it out of the refund window. It's a strange scam, just because it seems like Valve would pull these down and probably do automated refunds anyway.