Darkest Dungeon has been one of the hottest, hardest games to see release in the new year. Despite being an Early Access title, the psychologically-traumatic dungeon-crawler debuted as one of the top-selling games on Steam and has stayed there since its debut. That must be why a scammer has a shady $3.99 listing up on the official Windows app store.
One look at the dubious point-of-sale page—credited to one Balaji Chowdary— for Darkest Dungeon and it's apparent that it's a fake. Among other things, the listing shows a file size of 2.0 MB, a age rating of 3+ and a bizarre description. For comparison's sake, the real game on Steam is about 900 MB and goes for $19.99 On the Reddit thread where the fake is being discussed, Redditors speculate that this might be a way to distribute malware or a virus.
Members of dev studio Red Hook Games—who are the real creators of of Darkest Dungeon have been warning folks of this version as well.
Please ensure you purchase the game from Steam or Humble. Scams have been reported and we are checking into them.
— Darkest Dungeon (@DarkestDungeon) February 22, 2015
If anyone has a contact at Windows Game Store, please share. Somebody is scamming DD by selling it (illegally) on there.
— Red Hook Tyler (@tylersigman) February 22, 2015
On a related note, if you didn't buy Darkest Dungeon on Steam or Humble Store right now, you got scammed.
— Red Hook Tyler (@tylersigman) February 22, 2015
Meanwhile, the seller who's trying to pass off this fake also also has other video games that are clearly scams, Watchmen: The End Is Nigh and Lego Batman 3 among them. As has happened before on the Apple App Store and Google Play storefronts, this looks like a case of inconsistent moderation letting folks with bad intent get through the gates. Kotaku has reached out to Red Hook Games and Microsoft for comment and will update this story if they respond.
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