Helldivers 2 developer responds as fake games appear on Steam
"We urge you to stay clear."
Two fake Helldivers 2 games popped up on Steam last night, both masquerading as Arrowhead's hit shooter in a bid to scam people into buying their product. Each title listed Arrowhead as its developer, and PlayStation as its publisher.
A message sent around the official Arrowhead Discord this morning warned the community of these fake games, stating that the only legitimate releases were Helldivers 2 and Helldivers 2: Super Citizen Edition with the correct release date of 8th February.
"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," Arrowhead's community manager wrote. "Again, the only two Helldivers 2 products we market are Helldivers 2 and Helldivers 2 Super Citizen Edition."
The fake Helldivers 2 games have now been removed from Steam, with Arrowhead stating Valve acted "very swiftly" when contacted.
However, evidence remains thanks to screenshots shared by Wario64 on X. These images show just how convincing the fake games were. Aside from the wrong release date and the small handful of user reviews, the rest of the sale page looks incredibly similar to Arrowhead's actual Helldivers 2 sales page.
SteamDB history shows one of the fake games was initially titled Figurality, and developed by Bside studio. The owner edited the game's Steam page in the early hours of this morning, changing the title, description, publisher and developer to match those of Arrowhead's Helldivers 2.
The fact it was possible for a developer to change their product to such an extent has raised concerns about the precautions Valve has in place to prevent this sort of scam from happening. Eurogamer reached out to Valve for further comment on its policies and what it will do to prevent this sort of thing from happening again.
Valve replied to state it "had refunded any customer we believe was impacted", but did not provide details on what it will do next.
Helldivers 2 (the real deal) has been a monumental success for Arrowhead and PlayStation. It quickly became PlayStation's biggest Steam launch ever and currently has an all-time concurrent peak of over 458,000 players.
"With its high-chaos, high-comedy firefights, it's a riot to play with friends," Emma Kent wrote in Eurogamer's Helldivers 2 review, awarding it four stars.