This morning the busy Helldivers 2 Discord sent out a warning from the team. Fraudsters threatened the integrity of Super Earth. Developers of several games on Steam had changed the name of their games to Helldivers 2, completely changing their Steam pages including the developer and publisher tags. And Helldivers 2 wasn't the only one affected by this scam.
Palworld, Last Epoch and Escape from Tarkov were also imitated using the same strategy, and every Steam page for the knock-offs looked largely genuine to a casual observer. At first glance, only the few reviews suggested that something was wrong.
Although games have been modified by different studios, it is likely that this fraud is perpetrated by a single organization since the modifications occurred around the same time and the method was identical. The other games in these developers' catalogs also have a lot in common: they look like cheaply made asset flips and are currently all priced at £39 or £49.
The developers in question have used several different names. For example, the developer of Do Not Smile, which was briefly disguised as Helldivers 2, was named Whitehole games until November, where it moved to Glamurny and then became Fest Studios earlier this month. Whitehole/Glamurny/Fest was also behind the fake Last Epoch.
Fest also created one fake Escape from Tarkov page, which isn't even on Steam. So the first result on Google for “Escape from Tarkov Steam” is a scam.
SoleOnBoard Studio, now known as Albobs and Bside Studio, was responsible for the Palworld and Helldivers 2 knock-offs. While these knock-offs have all been removed from sale, the remaining games from these developers are still for sale. Hopefully these developers, and I hate to call them that, will be banned from Steam, but it's great that they'll still be able to do business on the platform even after that.
Valve was once heavily criticized for its draconian approach to releasing games on Steam. It was extremely picky. Steam Greenlight, a sort of precursor to Early Access, opened the doors a little in 2012, but now they're fully open, turning Steam into the Wild West. The large number of games available makes discoverability a nightmare, and there is no real quality control. Asset flips, games that just don't work – they all have a home on Steam.
What's particularly concerning is how easy it was for these fake studios to masquerade as legitimate studios like Arrowhead. A few quick edits, a few links, a few official screenshots and voila, a site that looks pretty darn real unless you scrutinize it closely. No wonder some customers fell for the scam.
