PSA: Red Dead Redemption 2 Open Beta Is Fake

[NewsBot]

This isn’t the first time a Red Dead Redemption 2 open beta scam has made the rounds, and this one is as fake as the last. No matter how tempted you might be, do not fall for these phishing scams, as the only point is to extort personal information or money.

Never in its history has Rockstar Games done an open beta, nor is it likely to. And it’s a certainty that there is not, nor ever will be, an open beta for Red Dead Redemption 2.

A Twitter account with the Rockstar Games logo as a profile picture and official Red Dead Redemption 2 artwork with “Open Beta” photoshopped on as a banner has been set up to fool the unwary.

But if you spend more than half a second looking at it, the red flags start flying. Instead of having a proper description like all official developer accounts do, it just has a link and some finger pointing emoji. This simple misstep is but the first in a series of obvious errors which make this a shoddy scam.

The account’s location is set as Queens, New York, which is a location no Rockstar studio or office presides in. While this is not something most fans might know offhand, any non-half-assed attempt would have gotten it right. The account isn’t verified on Twitter either, but that still isn’t their biggest mistake.

The scammer outright lifted the typeface of the Destiny 2 beta, spaceship icon and all, and pasted it over their banner in an unaltered state.

Now, Destiny 2 is kind of a big thing, running in the same mainstream circles that fans of Red Dead are active in, meaning the target audience of the “interested in Red Dead but not fully versed in how Rockstar operates” people would still likely catch this error.

Another blunder is in their terms of use.

In an attempt to look more convincing, the website for the supposed Red Dead Redemption 2 open beta has a legal section. However instead of succeeding in cementing the illusion, it just adds to their embarrassment. It’s been copied verbatim from Microsoft legalese, with direct references to the Xbox One and Xbox Live in it.

The extremely low amount of effort put into this is quite amazing.

The activity of the account is another giveaway. There is only a single actual original tweet, pinned, which also holds a link to the scam site, besides which the account has only sporadically retweeted seemingly random posts made by genuine support accounts of renowned game developers – like Bioware, Blizzard, and Ubisoft. You’d think an account associated with Rockstar Games would retweet more of the main account’s content, but since this is a scam, they probably did’t want to bring attention to themselves.

Now is a great time to reiterate a few key facts about Rockstar and scams.

You should absolutely never, ever believe news or shady links about some kind of open beta test for any of Rockstar Games’ titles. In fact, don’t ever believe news of this kind that doesn’t come directly from Rockstar. If they haven’t confirmed anything officially, it isn’t guaranteed. Open beta testing isn’t something Rockstar does, and we don’t think that stance will change anytime soon.

The best you can do in this case is to ignore the fake account entirely or report it to Twitter. We can’t do much about their website at this juncture beyond not giving them the info they want to scam us out of.

The post PSA: Red Dead Redemption 2 Open Beta Is Fake appeared first on RDR2.

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[tadp0le]

I knew it was only a matter of time. The only people who get their hands on betas this early are registered beta testers within the company itself. 

[bluntTR4P]

Is this something that is happening more and more now for new titles? I swear I see thing kind of thing for most games anymore. What the heck. Unless you know it is really the company than don't bother. 

[watery buffalo]

On 9/25/2017 at 2:20 PM, bluntTR4P said:

Is this something that is happening more and more now for new titles? I swear I see thing kind of thing for most games anymore. What the heck. Unless you know it is really the company than don't bother. 

Yeah I think so. People are so desperate to play the game first that they fall for them all the time too, specially kids and teens.