Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. News

Gamers beware: Rockstar fighting a rising tide of Grand Theft Auto V scammers

Anthony John Agnello
By
Grand Theft Auto 5
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Grand Theft Auto V is out in September, and Rockstar’s long in the works opus will likely be the swan song for Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and act as one last epic before the first round of HD consoles ride off into the sunset. Everyone wants this game to come out, from Take-Two Interactive’s anxious shareholders to the series’ legion of adoring fans. Hence why it’s been so lucrative for actual criminals to profit off the game well before it even comes out by scamming people into thinking they’re getting early access to GTA5.

A number of less than scrupulous individuals are opening websites purporting to have Grand Theft Auto V beta keys, codes giving access to an early version of the game. UK citizen Carl Wright, for example, was hosting a website for a group legally called LCN.COM Ltd. who were until February hosting a website called getgtavbeta.com. Rockstar Games won the support of the World Intellectual Property Organization in shutting it down, as well as a second website called betagtav.com, but the studio is still fighting to take down others including gtavbeta.net, gtadownloadsecure.com, and gtavbeta.org.

Recommended Videos

These scams work by first asking people to spread the website’s info through Facebook, by sharing a link, liking the website on the social network, and sharing a message five times. After doing that, the websites offer a link asking which console you use, then a malicious file is downloaded to your computer.

Related

It doesn’t matter that Rockstar Games has never publicly discussed a beta for the game or that the official website for the game has absolutely no mention of public testing for its online modes. People have still signed up for these scams.  The GTA 5 Beta Facebook page has nearly 1400 likes, and that’s just one of the many scams associated with the game.

As of this writing, no one outside of Rockstar Games has even played the new Grand Theft Auto. Save for a blow out cover story on the game in the December issue of Game Informer magazine, Rockstar has kept its game under lock and key. The delay of the game has already caused financial strain on parent company Take-Two Interactive.

Source: Fusible

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Anthony John Agnello
Anthony John Agnello
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Anthony John Agnello is a writer living in New York. He works as the Community Manager of Joystiq.com and his writing has…
We need to see these 3 things in Grand Theft Auto 6’s first trailer
gta 6 first trailer speculation v

It’s almost time. After over a decade of waiting, we’ll finally get our first look at the next Grand Theft Auto game sometime this December. When it arrives, the Grand Theft Auto 6 reveal will be one of the biggest video game industry announcements of the year, regardless of what Rockstar Games shows. Despite that, there are specific things that the GTA 6 reveal trailer needs to tell us to live up to its hype.

Although Rockstar has said little about the project before now, GTA 6 might be one of the most anticipated games ever, and it’s following up one of the most successful individual video games of all time. Speculation on where this game will be set, what it will be about, and what innovations it will bring to the medium have been rampant for years. I know this because I’ve played a part in this hype cycle myself -- and this very article is adding to it right now.

Read more
Grand Theft Auto 6 is getting its first trailer sooner than you think
Trevor firing an assault rifle in GTA 5.

After a decades-long wait, Grand Theft Auto 6 is finally making its formal debut. Rockstar announced that the first trailer for the anticipated open-world game will drop in early December.

It's no stretch to call Grand Theft Auto 6 the most anticipated video game of all time. It's been 10 years since the mega-successful Grand Theft Auto 5 launched and fans have been itching for news on a sequel since. That impatience boiled over last year when Rockstar suffered a major security breach that saw early footage from the game leaking. Now the studio is finally ready to reveal the game on its own terms.

Read more
Grand Theft Auto V makes its surprise return to Xbox Game Pass today
A man drives away in a boat with stolen money in Grand Theft Auto 5 art.

Xbox Game Pass is kicking off July with a major surprise, as Grand Theft Auto V has returned to the service. Rockstar's sales juggernaut leads an otherwise light month for Game Pass, which brings Capcom's Exoprimal as a day-one launch.

This isn't the first time that Grand Theft Auto V has been on Game Pass. It was previously on the service circa 2021 but removed from it that August. Rockstar has a history of putting its games on Game Pass for a brief window before pulling it, as it also did with Red Dead Redemption 2.

Read more