Helldivers 2’s developer Arrowhead Game Studios recently issued statements about scam Steam listings impersonating the popular game. The Sony-published third-person shooter launched simultaneously on PS5 and PC via Steam last month. However, at least three fraudulent store pages recently appeared on Valve’s platform.
Arrowhead Game Studios responds to fake Helldivers 2 listings
Overnight, Helldivers 2 fans spread the word of multiple fake listings on Steam. Rather than creating a new page, the scammers took existing games and replaced the title, images, and descriptions with Helldivers 2’s. The scammers also replaced the original publisher and developer names with Arrowhead and PlayStation PC, which turns out to be remarkably easy to do. Steam eventually removed the fake store pages only after Arrowhead founder Johan Pilestedt publicly raised the issue.
“So,” Pilestedt said on Twitter, “there’s apperantly [sic] ‘store dupes’ of @helldivers2 with stolen imagery from the game and posing as us, with @ArrowheadGS tags and all! How is this possible @Steam?”
He warned fans to check the Steam user reviews, one of the only things the scammers couldn’t change, before buying. Arrowhead also warned fans on Discord to check the release date and expressed frustration at the scammer’s actions. “People posting as us trying to scam people is obviously very sad and frustrating,” the studio shared. “And for that as well as for security reasons we urge you to stay clear of them.”
Arrowhead released another statement on Discord after Valve removed the fake Steam listings: “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.”
For anyone wondering how this was possible, Steam lacks built-in defenses against this kind of impersonation. There is an approval process to start selling a game on Steam. However, the developer can change the title, description, and screenshots at any time. Meanwhile, the publisher and developer tags are just text fields with no system of verification.
