Uh, so, I’m going to be honest with you guys right off the bat; I’ve fallen into a bit of a weird rabbit hole with this article and I’m a little confused by what I’ve found.
So a page for a game just went live on the PlayStation Store called Grand Taking Ages VI, which is clearly supposed to be taking the mick out of Grand Theft Auto VI.
It’s a real listing, and you can find it here on Sony’s site.
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While the listing may be real, I don’t think the game is… nor do I think the company behind it is either.
If you Google the publisher, Violarte, you’ll be greeted with their website.
Quick couple of notes here, the first being that none of the games or awards they list on their website are real. Just a bunch of made-up nonsense, all of which is seemingly AI-generated. Good start.
Second note, try searching up any of those games they list on their website. If you do, you’ll be greeted by a bunch of different sites and publishers, such as “Whoopee Games” and “Strider Games”.
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Notice anything weird about those sites? They look the exact same as Violarte’s site, and they also feature the same fake games and the same fake awards.
I ended up finding (no exaggeration) at least a dozen other similar sites, such as Lyanda Games, Chazzwazza Games, Logia Games, Hexpion Studio and TrueMyth Games.
Even weirder still, I found one such site that does seem to point to a real developer: NewGen Studio.
Except, if you follow the developer link for their latest title Zombie Within on Steam… you get taken to a different page for a company called “Snail Games USA”?
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None of NewGen Studio’s games are listed on Snail Games’ portfolio on their official website so, uh, is NewGen simply pretending to be affiliated with Snail Games USA? Probably not considering Snail Games feature NewGen’s games on their own Steam page.
If you look up the WHOIS registration results for these pages, it’s all mysteriously either missing or blocked from public consumption too.
Yeah, I’m gonna need some help in the comment section of this one. At the very least I can tell you not to buy “Grand Taking Ages VI” because it probably isn’t a real game.
How easy is it to get a game onto Sony’s site anyway?
Topics: Grand Theft Auto, Rockstar Games, Sony, PlayStation