Publisher Take-Two is not taking kindly to scam websites offering people fake beta programs for the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 5. The company has already sucessfully won disputes with two scam websites, getgtavbeta.com and betagtav.com, with additional complaints leveled with the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) against gta5betacode.com and grandtheftauto5beta.com.
While grandtheftauto5beta.com does not have a full webpage at the moment, gta5betacode,com does. The scam by that website works by getting people to share the websites on Facebook, followed by spamming messages to five different game pages promoting the website. Then the user Likes the website's page on Facebook, and clicks a button to get a beta key. After picking a console, the user is finally prompted to download a file onto their computer.
While this may seem like an obvious scam site for savvy Internet users, Fusible is reporting that the website has at least 1,300 Likes on Facebook, indicating that many people may have been tricked into downloading harmful files onto their computers.
Take-Two should have no problem shutting down these scam websites, as clearly these websites are harmful to users and Take-two. Grand Theft Auto 5 is slated to come out September 17, and already the game is getting huge amounts of hype. It is already one of the most anticipated games yet to be released in Japan, a full six months before the game's release. Fans have already started compiling databases for the game's characters and locations as well, using only the media Rockstar North and Take-Two have released. With so much anticipation about the game, scam sites are not surprising, but eager gamers beware.