Scams have been a part of the online gaming community in Vietnam since its inception. They have accompanied the Vietnamese gaming market from its early days to the present. No matter the platform or game title, there are always malicious individuals waiting to scam and seize others’ hard work or exploit naive gamers for their own benefit.
Hacks, scam websites, and fake fanpages have always been “side by side” with game products since their launch. These are the “black sheep” that publishers cannot completely eradicate. What many publishers can do is to issue warnings to players not to trust websites or fanpages with unclear origins.
However, not all players heed the publishers’ warnings. Especially in the face of the very sophisticated tricks of scammers. Not only do they create fanpages identical to the official ones, but many scam pages even run ads to increase visibility among the target gamers of that game. This is truly an investment in deception.
Because of this investment, many gamers have fallen into the scammer’s trap. These pages operate openly with tricks that are “as old as time”. Recently, a fake fanpage impersonating Call of Duty: Mobile VN has launched scams like offering purple weapon codes, battle passes, and rare purple characters… at very low prices to lure players, especially inexperienced Call of Duty: Mobile VN gamers.
As a result, many players have fallen victim to this scam. Many have lost money to these scam pages in hopes of receiving rare characters at low prices, but they will surely never receive anything.
The official fanpage of Call of Duty: Mobile VN has a verified blue tick from Facebook, which is the most accurate sign for players to identify the official page. Recently, this official fanpage also issued a warning to its players about being cautious with scam websites.
In fact, the scams of Call of Duty: Mobile VN specifically and online game products in general share similar patterns and often lack new tricks. However, despite numerous warnings and many previous cases of blatant scams, there are still gamers who trust and follow the instructions given by the scammers.
Perhaps, the players who are scammed often are the younger ones, those who are easily deceived, exploited, and taken advantage of. Hopefully, nothing unfortunate will happen to the gamers who “fell for” this scam event. Gamers should always be cautious and alert before the “schemes” of deception and appropriation by many bad actors in the online space before receiving a “unfortunate outcome” for themselves.