PlayStation owners warned about 'scam' game being sold on its store
Seeing a game pop off in popularity on another platform and having to wait for it to come to where you play your game is never any fun, but your anticipation might lead you to buy a 'fake' game on the store, wasting your money in the process.
Console gamers often have to wait months and years to play early access games that drop straight onto PC, as PlayStation and Xbox have far stricter rules when it comes to what games they allow onto their storefronts.
Often game developers don't have the money, time, or experience to bring their games to consoles yet either, so if you don't have a PC powerful enough to play them, you're going to start to feel left out.
Sometimes your anticipation and excitement will lead you to go in search of a game you've heard about on the PlayStation store, but you have to be careful as there are often 'fake' games designed to trick people into buying something that's not what they think it is.
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The most recent case of this involves the recent co-op horror mega hit 'R.E.P.O' on Steam, which has exploded in popularity since its release on February 26 this year.
It's managed to earn a peak player count of over 270,000 and has the attention of many of the biggest streamers on Twitch, yet it's currently only available to purchase on Steam in early access.
However, one keen-eyed gamer on Reddit has spotted what they believe to be a 'fake' game designed to ape off the hype of R.E.P.O's success, and has warned the community not to accidentally purchase this thinking it's the co-op horror sensation.
"I've seen a few people post about the game so this should be fairly obvious but don't buy the PSN version, it's not the real game and the real game has yet to be announced for console," their post reveals, referencing the listing for 'R.E.P.O: Ghost Haul' on the PlayStation store.
"The version on PSN is from Adventure Games S.R.I. and the Steam version is both developed and published by semiwork," they continue, adding that "Semiwork has said in a dev video on YouTube from 11 days ago that right now the game isn't currently planned for console and is something that they'll explore once the game leaves early access and hits 1.0," an event that currently hasn't happened.
R.E.P.O: Ghost Haul recently made it to the #1 spot on PlayStation's trending charts following it's release on April 1, and while it could just be a complete coincidence, many have expressed their doubts that it's not just trying to ape off of the success of the PC-only title of a similar name.
"Likely just another crappy shovelware clone of the game that's popular on PC called R.E.P.O," writes one comment in response to the news, with another adding that the PSN game is "some crap you expect to see on YouTube shorts ads but nah it's on the front page of the store of arguably the most popular gaming platform in the world."
While this isn't a new problem, this particular case has prompted many to call for action and demand that Sony deal with the issue.
"Sony seriously needs to address this issue on PSN of fake games imitating real ones before someone decides to sue them for copyright infringement or misuse of their IP," outlines the original post highlighting the matter.
Sony do have to approve everything that lands on their storefront, so they are technically the only ones that can solve this problem, but whether it actually gets fixed in the near future is still up in the air.
Other comments have pointed out that Sony has seemingly announced that they would put a stop to these practices, but it has been months since that happened and incidents like this are still popping up.