Steam game disguises itself as Helldivers 2 and goes on sale, is swiftly delisted
In the span of a few hours, the game changed its store page and was taken down.
If you were awake in early this morning, you may have seen that Helldivers 2 was having a massive Steam sale. This was, in fact, an imposter. Another game in disguise, which was promptly delisted from the storefront after changing its name, key art, and developer information to mimic the popular sci-fi shooter.
According to SteamDB - a third party website in which ample information of Steam games can be viewed - the events that led up to this conclusion can be clearly seen. At 9:55PM ET, indie game Figurality had its name changed to Helldivers 2. Mere minutes before, the publisher and developer listed was changed to PlayStation PC LLC and Arrowhead Game Studios respectively.
Around the same time, the game's description was changed to mimic the official Helldivers 2 store page. The tags were changed, as were screenshots, trailers, assets and assosiations. Even an epilepsy disclaimer was added - paired with Sony and Arrowhead Legal info of course. It was here that a whopping 75% sale on the game was added.
It was four hours later, at 1:07AM ET, that the game was delisted "at publisher request" according to the Steam DB page. That's why right now, if you try to find this false Helldivers 2 on Steam it won't come up. The game has been removed from the Steam store.
It's an interesting story. For one, it's great that this was caught and fixed within such a short span of time. It is wild that this sort of thing can happen in the first place, but for those who did end up mistakenly buying this false Helldivers 2 while on sale, the Steam refund policy will almost certainly let you off the hook for the buying price.
What's truly wild is that... this may not have been the only game to have tried this at the time. According to a post in the offical Helldivers 2 Discord server, community manager Twinbeard wrote, "here 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."
When Valve did act, this was soon updated with, "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 DMed or pinged me/us about the fake pages and games. Together we stand."
So disaster averted. I suppose imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and these seperate parties wanted in on the incredible success Helldivers 2 has been having since its launch. Tough luck though chumps. Everyone knows if its glory you want, you need to earn it by getting your hands dirty down on Maleveon Creek.