Valve, the owner of gaming platform Steam has pulled two games disguised as Helldviers 2. The two illicit versions were posted to Steam with discounted prices and attempted to con gamers into buying them with images and content used by Arrowhead Studio’s critically acclaimed title.
Steam’s owner and policy enforcer Valve, has now removed both of these titles from the online gaming storefront.
Helldivers scams
The two games in question were Do Not Smile and Figurality. Both had store pages renamed ‘Helldivers 2’ and had their descriptions listed as the bug shooting co-op game. Fest Studio and Bside Studio are the two copy artists preying on unsuspecting gamers to benefit from the success of the shooter.
“The Galaxy’s Line of Offence. Enlist the Helldivers and join the fight for freedom…” the summary line read on the Figurality page.
Well-known community leaker Wario64 would post on X alerting other gamers to the possible ploy by the rogue studios:
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
Twinbeard, the Community Manager for Helldivers 2 would post to Discord about the impersonators. “There are unfortunately two (three now?!) fake games being marketed as Helldivers 2 on Steam at the moment,” he told fans of the game.
He would go on to confirm that the fakes “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. 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.”
Twinbeard would conclude that the impersonators “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.”
The games have now been removed from the platform, but Valve is yet to make an official comment about how these games were able to mimic the popular bug-destroying shooter.
Twinbeard would say later “All fake store pages now seem to have been taken down by Valve. THANK YOU to everyone who DMed or pinged me/us about the fake pages and games. Together we stand.”
Helldviers 2 has been received so well that the servers were down due to the mass of players hoping to join in the fight to save New Earth. The title is Sony’s biggest ever steam launch and recorded a massive concurrent player count of 155,000 for the initial weeks of the game’s lifecycle.
Fans of the series will be happy these fakes have been taken down but must stay vigilant to make sure they are entering the right fight to save the galaxy from waves of android and bug-based enemies.
