SUMMARY
- Helldivers 2 is a highly successful game on Steam, being one of the highest rated games of 2024.
- Some people are trying to use Helldivers 2's success to scam others on Steam.
Helldivers 2 has been a monumental success for Arrowhead Studios, small-team developers, and the gaming industry as a whole. A co-op third-person shooter, Helldivers 2 pits players against two different factions of enemies. Players playing the game on all platforms have to collectively work together to liberate the planets from the hold of the enemy factions. Players fight ‘For Democracy’ in the shooter and seek to liberate the planets to 100% and restore civilization.
The game was released on February 8, 2024, and has been seeing a constant 100K concurrent players. Helldivers 2 even took down GTA 5 at the Steam Charts. While the game had server capacity issues, the developers worked hard to increase the server cap to 800,000 in a recent update.
However, with great success, Helldivers 2 inadvertently gave rise to some scams on Steam, which shows the game being on discount even though it is not.
Helldivers 2 scams on Steam
Helldivers 2 became a victim of scams on Steam. The game’s success has despicable individuals making listings on Steam that are extremely similar to the Arrowhead shooter. The listings take it up a notch by even applying discounts to the listings, fooling players into thinking the actual game was on sale.
No, Helldivers 2 is not 75%/50% off on Steam. Someone else is using a different game and renaming it exactly like a Helldivers 2 listing as a scam pic.twitter.com/NLy1uUoxd6
— Wario64 (@Wario64) March 1, 2024
There were reportedly two listings besides the main game, which showed discounts of 50% and 75% respectively. Both the listings were of indie games, disguised as the main game. However, it seems like not a lot of people fell victim to the scam listings and promptly reported them to Valve. There are many precautions users can take to avoid these scams, namely:
- The release date of the game
- Reviews on the title
- Price of the title, with/without discounts
- Breadcrumb of the page
Arrowhead’s Community Manager, Twinbeard, even posted a warning for users in the Discord, stating:
“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.”
Two indie games on Steam tried to scam players by disguising themselves as discounted copies of #Helldivers2
They’ve since been removed pic.twitter.com/BaxTos6wl4
— Culture Crave 🍿 (@CultureCrave) March 1, 2024
“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.”
Twinbeard mentioned how the Arrowhead Legal Department is already working on removing the listing and it seems like Valve was swift with their action too.
Valve swiftly removes fake listing scams of popular titles
Several players and Arrowhead Studios reported the fake listings of the co-op shooter to Valve. The Steam Owners quickly took swift action and wiped out any and all fake listings of the game from the platform.
Twinbeard posted the update on Discord which said, “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.”
This wave of fake games that suddenly appeared on Steam today is quite concerning, but thankfully Steam took down the fake Palworld one almost immediately after we contacted them.
Hope no one was tricked into buying it!
— Bucky | Palworld & Craftopia (@Bucky_cm) March 1, 2024
Palworld’s Community Chief, Bucky, was alerted to a fake listing of Palworld as well suggesting that Helldivers 2 was not alone. The listing was promptly removed.
Bucky also talks about how these fake games appearing on Steam are concerning and Valve needs to take swift measures to ensure that the scams don’t repeat. Valve is now under scrutiny and fans are asking the company to change its listings policy so as to prevent these scams from repeating.
