Urgent help - How to deal with scam/copycat games without opening your own game?

Help and Feedback Game Design Support
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#1

Hello everyone. For the past few months my game HELLMET has had numerous scam games pop up. These games imitate the legitimate one, often using fancy and flashy GFX to make players believe it’s the legitimate one (despite the heavy like-dislike ratio).

The legitimate game: HELLMET [READ DESC] - Roblox

These games would then promise early access to the legitimate game by selling the players a gamepass. As we speak, these scammers have been rumoured to collect a total of 200k robux, just by scamming people.

I’ve tried DMCA striking them – Roblox, for some reason, would not take down the main one (listed here: HELLMET [DEMO] - Roblox

The worst thing is, people become aware of my game’s existence and gameplay on TikTok or other platforms, where it has collected MILLIONS of views. This unfortunately does not inform them about the scam games, which leads these uninformed viewers to purchase early access believing it legitimately would give them early access.

Since my game is in a closed state, this means the scam game (the primary one listed) gets more concurrent players (roughly 4-8 players, compared to my game’s 0). This leads Roblox to recommend it first, leading to even MORE scamming. Some of the people perpetrating these scams have even created 1:1 recreations of my avatar and display name in order to fool more people.

I’ve tried to ask Roblox to take down the main group and the group’s holders, but they haven’t responded to my DMCA takedown request. I’ve also tried “opening” the game (but immediately kicking out those who joined w/ a warning message), but that has only led to the game’s concurrent count being overtaken by the primary scam game.

As you can clearly tell, this is unimaginably frusturating. Not only are people being scammed, but now they believe I was the one scamming them.

I can’t just re-open my game; I fear it would burn through the hype too quickly and make the game irrelevant, even if it’s in its unfinished state.

What on earth do I do?!?!?! I don’t feel like I can take legal action, because these people simply cannot be trusted. They’ve attempted to dox me, and act extremely unprofessionally. What’s to say these people would willingly go to court and be trusted with my real life information?

TL;DR: Scam games going around promising early access gamepasses to my (currently) closed game. Very urgent, people being scammed as we speak. I’ve tried DMCA and overtaking player counts, that didn’t work.

Please, anyone – ANYTHING would help. I’m desperate to solve this issue. If need be, I may as well open my game just to prevent people from being scammed out of their money.

10 Likes
#2

You should spread Youtuber awareness, try reaching out to content creators who have already played HELLMET and convince them to edit their description or titles.

Opening the game seems like the best thing to do in my opinion, it’d immediately overtake the scammers.
If you do this, you can use it as an opportunity to:

  • Add a disclaimer re-iterating your no monetization policy
  • Add translucent text on the gameplay screen saying “HELLMET IS CREATED BY Sensei_Developer” or other means to notify viewers

This is really a sticky situation, to me the best options are to do either do nothing or to just open the game. I would review your situation carefully, and if you do decide to open the game, DO EVERYTHING RIGHT. You’ll only get one chance.

6 Likes
#3

I remember somebody being hacked out of his account and changing the thumbnail of one of his youtube videos which was uploaded as a thumbnail on the games page to inform the people who were playing the game to not support it and that the robux was being funneled to the hacker, you could do something similar with an eye catching game icon that tells people to read the description of your game to be aware of these scams.

3 Likes
#4

That could work… but I really hope it doesn’t make players turn away from the game when it fully releases in the future. God, I hate those scammers

3 Likes
#5

You can just have the icon be whatever else you may have planned before when it releases because it will overtake the playercount from the scam games extremely easily.

1 Like
#6

I think these scam games thrive due to the lack of transparency of when early access will open back up. Because of this, players become desperate to play any lookalikes and lose hope that they will be able to play the original anytime soon.

Just to make sure, do you tell people when early access will open back up again?

Based on personal experience, I get a lot more hyped up when there’s a release date of things. If you ever played Elden Ring, you would know that the hype for DLC died quickly during the time between announcement and the trailer. It’s important to give players something to look forward to.

I could be wrong, but I think a similar situation happened with Deepwoken, where the developers kept the game closed off for a while.

P.S.: I’m a big fan of the game. Release early access again? :pray: :pleading_face:

4 Likes
#7

Yes, the game title states: “[READ DESC]”. The game description says:
“Thank you for playing HELLMET! I’ll reopen this game sometime later. And also; Please be careful for scams out there that promise “early access”. I would never monetize any of my games, nor will I allow special privilege to those who aren’t QA testers. Stay responsible and spread the word of scams to your friends.”

I don’t know how much more transparency I need. Perhaps I could try and annoy flamingo or some other dramatuber about this. God.

Look, I’m not in a great mood because of these scammers. Please read the description of the legitimate game

3 Likes
#8

I know about the description, but I was talking more about a numerical date. “Sometime later” could be days or months.

I was joking. Sorry if I made you feel worse.

1 Like
#9

If you are in the EU, have you tried using the DSA? It is essentially another report forum but Roblox is basically forced to take action due to that policy in the EU

#10

Stupid idea here, but if possible, give non-testers a ‘play’ button that forces the player to be informed about the scam games and how you will never monetize your projects, and do not kick them. It may drive away some hype but put something in the game’s title that makes it clear that the game isn’t released. If you want to, take this to social media like Twitter, or content creators. If you want to, take an aggressive route towards Roblox support/social media about support failing to do anything about this; threaten to ‘sue’. Your ultimate goal here would be to get the edgy scammers terminated.

1 Like
#11

Ah, my bad. Sorry, was feeling very pissed cuz of those people.

Anyways, I’m not someone who promises release dates or anything. It’s just not who I am. However I may consider it as a last resort

2 Likes
#12

Unfortunately, I live in the alien planet known as Canada. Just recently, I’ve sent out a DMCA takedown request and I’m hoping they send a human moderator to review it and ban the groups/people involved.

1 Like
#13

I mean, I could try. I’ll probably have to implement server-sided sanity checks to make sure non-testers can’t exploit their way to playing the game.

Not kicking them could probably do wonders, I don’t know why I haven’t thought of this earlier.

Do you know any way to contact big roblox youtubers/platforms? I don’t think simply DMing them would work

1 Like
#14

You’re right, exploiters could access game files and make leaks before the game is released, but in this case, you could:

  • prevent asset replication
  • teleport to a separate place (UNDER THE UNIVERSE) before the player has loaded (if non-tester)
  • stall asset loading

Contacting large Roblox news sources/creators isn’t too hard, depending on size, but a Roblox news YouTube channel or Twitter account would be easier, perhaps if you make a complaint/notice on Twitter under your game development group’s account while tagging every news account you can find.

#15

You are the developer of Hellmet. (Highly anticipated and acclaimed game), so you should be able to.

1 Like
#16

sue them

(Lorem Ispum bla bla bla enough words for forum post)

#17

heard these worked to some dude back in the past, don’t remember his name but:

keep reporting to roblox with as much evidence as possible

take legal action

1 Like