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YouTube Gaming's Most-Watched Videos Are Dominated By Scams and Cheats 51

Posted by BeauHD from the heads-up dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report from Wired: In January, all seven of the most-watched YouTube Gaming channels weren't run by happy gamers livestreaming the game du jour. They were instead recorded, autoplaying videos advertising videogame cheats and hacks, sometimes attached to sketchy, credential-vacuuming websites, according to one analytics firm. The trend has continued into this month, with five of the top seven most-watched YouTube Gaming channels last weekend advertising cheats. Take one example: As of this article's writing, a video featuring a cracking teenage boy's voice promoting an unconvincing "money glitch" in Grand Theft Auto 5 boasts 11,000 concurrent viewers. "So basically it's about glitching Rockstar's online servers and makes them send out whatever amount of money," says the voice. The video encourages Grand Theft Auto 5 players to visit a website called "Perfect Glitches," type in their gamer tag and the amount of in-game money they want -- up to $9,999,999,999 a day -- and hit "generate." But, ho -- the user must first prove that they are human by filling in their personal information on two other websites. [...] After you fill in your personal information -- anything from your address to your credit card number -- these types of sites will often turn around and sell it. Other times, sites that promise cheats or in-game money will download malware onto your computer.

While several YouTube Gaming cheat channels have disappeared since January, a couple of long-time users remain and many more keep cropping up. One particularly psychedelic channel features a 3-D cat in a Russian hat advertising free in-game money, against a background of gaudy Russian text and a scrolling chat box. Stitch from Lilo and Stitch dances on the top left corner. With 10,000 live concurrent viewers as of this article's writing, the video buoys the whole category for a somewhat niche shooter game called Standoff 2. It's unlikely that the bulk of those eyebrow-raising view numbers are real humans watching this stuff. Instead, scammers drive bot traffic to them to push the videos to the top of YouTube Gaming directories, where they can get the most exposure for the longest period of time -- a better position from which to dupe unlucky viewers. "The prevalence of these game-cheating YouTube Gaming channels with what appears to be huge numbers of bots complicates the narrative of the so-called 'platform wars' between Twitch, YouTube Gaming, Mixer, and Facebook Gaming," reports Wired in closing. "While Twitch's livestream directory might have a couple pirated sports streams or sketchy gambling streams, its top ranks aren't nearly as dominated by ads for cheats."

"If a chunk of YouTube Gaming's hours watched is due to this sort of behavior, then it may be a little longer until Twitch is knocked off its throne."
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YouTube Gaming's Most-Watched Videos Are Dominated By Scams and Cheats More

YouTube Gaming's Most-Watched Videos Are Dominated By Scams and Cheats

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  • People looking to cheat and exploit get what the deserve. Especially in a multiplayer game where your actions directly or indirectly impact others. Your "enjoyment" of a game shouldn't be at the expense of others or feeding off their misery like some sort of emotional vampire.

    • Enh, I might agree with you if Rockstar didn't sell fake money for real money.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      I'm not sure if there are cheats for Cities Skylines, but there are mods that can fix a number of shortcomings of the game. However you only compete against yourself so it's not really a big deal.

      Paying for DLC for extra content - that's fine by me.

  • Shady video links to shady website. Hundreds of cheaters cheated! Think of the children!

    • Re:News Flash! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by spun ( 1352 ) <loverevolutionary&yahoo,com> on Wednesday February 19, 2020 @10:27AM (#59742834) Journal

      This sort of cynical attitude does nothing but normalize parasitic behavior.

      • As long as its parasites that the parasites are infesting.

        • Re: News Flash! (Score:5, Insightful)

          by spun ( 1352 ) <loverevolutionary&yahoo,com> on Wednesday February 19, 2020 @12:44PM (#59743392) Journal

          No. This is still not okay. Two wrongs don't make a right, but more importantly, hosts die and parasites move on. We should stop the parasites before they infect regular, non parasitic humans.

          Basically, I and most other people do not want to live in a cut-throat, dog-eat-dog system. It's stressful and unpleasant. We would rather band together and collectively stop the parasites altogether.

          The law still applies, even when the victim is also guilty of a crime.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by DogDude ( 805747 )
            Basically, I and most other people do not want to live in a cut-throat, dog-eat-dog system. It's stressful and unpleasant. We would rather band together and collectively stop the parasites altogether.

            I couldn't agree more. As far as I can tell, the best way to avoid this on the Internet is to avoid anything that's popular. The Internet really has brought out the worst in the worst people, and spread it far and wide.

  • are about as accurate as google's anymore. Makes sense. I'm done with them anyhow as they put videos as the top results of my search. I'm not watching a 10 minute video to complete a 10 second task.

  • My Game, Not My Video (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kackle ( 910159 ) on Wednesday February 19, 2020 @08:40AM (#59742476)
    I once made a children's, cartoon (indie) video game and got it published to where it was in major retail chains across the country. Years later, I saw there was a (1 minute?) video with weird music on YouTube showing a static picture of the in-game characters, with the picture having random, simple, Photoshoppy filters applied to it. That was it. I always wondered what the purpose of that was. To get views?

    It seemed like it was of Japanese origin, but it gone now.
    • Sounds like it could have been some kind of class project where the point was to show off some different techniques. The person probably could have used any image, but perhaps they were just a fan of your game or the artwork.

    • Re:My Game, Not My Video (Score:4, Interesting)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Wednesday February 19, 2020 @10:52AM (#59742902) Homepage Journal

      Yep, it's YouTube Farming. Create a bot that goes through lists of things you feed it, like video games. Does a google image search and compiles the results into a video with some music and a few filters. Monetize said video and see if any views roll in.

      Spam enough of these videos and a few will make money.

  • up-down up-down left-right left-right, ab ab start? Oh take me to jail now, I deserve it!

    • Re:Wait let me guess... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Aereus ( 1042228 ) on Wednesday February 19, 2020 @09:23AM (#59742624)

      In a singleplayer game I'm completely fine with people cheating, as it can be fun to mess around in a game, or at the very least the only person you are "cheating" is yourself if you are using that to actually beat the game the first time. The broader issue is more and more games involve an online component where those actions can impact legitimate players. Either via causing massive amounts of inflation, or a more troubling "recent" trend of using them to have fun at others' expense.

      Multiplayer used to happen on dedicated servers, but with companies wanting complete control while shirking moderation responsibilities, there is little to no consequences for cheating or generally ruining others' gameplay experience. And to those people especially I say, it couldn't happen to more deserving people.

      Full disclosure: I had a stint of duping back when Diablo2 was relevant and in hindsight it likely contributed to the problems the average player had with trading for anything. The cost of many higher end items back then was dozens of Stones of Jordan, which might take several hours just to acquire one via normal means.

      • Cause and effect... or egg versus chicken, if you will.
        Many (if not most) multiplayer games are (one of more apply):
        - Very grindy, with the purpose of extracting money from players, selling them boosters” and so on;
        - Pay2Win (usually combined with the above). Either spend 6 hours a day on repetitive, meaningless tasks, or open your wallet and instantly buy said item or level-up.
        - Promoting loot boxes
        - Featuring ultra-rare items which are mandatory for end-game scenarios, items which you can either buy

        • Basically, if duping makes a game not fun, it wasn't a fun game to begin with. It was basically a skinner box.

      • a more troubling "recent" trend of using them to have fun at others' expense.

        As someone who remembers the existence and widespread use of aimbots and wallhacks in Team Fortress (the original Quake mod) and Counter-Strike (the Half Life mod) and map visibility hacks in multiplayer Warcraft 2 via Kali matchmaking, I'm a little curious about your definition of "recent."

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Aereus ( 1042228 )

          I also played the original TF and CS, along with WC2 ladders via Kali. The part you're forgetting about are the consequences: You had to pay for the game, and the servers were maintained by fellow players, so if you did those things you could get them temp or permabanned from the server. Some servers would even share ban lists, so eventually you would find yourself having to play with a terrible ping on some far away servers because of your actions. Admins didn't even have to be in the game, you could eithe

    • Yes, because you got it wrong. It's: up-up down-down left-right left-right b-a [select] start.
  • I suppose a number of their victims are children but why do children have credit cards anyway?

  • My solution is legit (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The video encourages Grand Theft Auto 5 players to visit a website called "Perfect Glitches," type in their gamer tag and the amount of in-game money they want -- up to $9,999,999,999 a day -- and hit "generate." But, ho -- the user must first prove that they are human by filling in their personal information on two other websites. [...] After you fill in your personal information -- anything from your address to your credit card number -- these types of sites will often turn around and sell it. Other times

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      Send a sealed envelope with $20 to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, no sender, no other message and then see if Secret Service starts to get busy.

  • They have no problem criticizing other companies via Project Zero but they can't or won't keep their own house in order. At best this is an example of the false positive/false negative biting them in the read end. At worst this is them allowing the content to pass to grow market share. Why any business would rely on any Alphabet provided service is insane. They are just cash bad as Facebook.
  • To YouTube Streaming, beause I used it to watch live races in the Blancpain channel more than anything else.

  • "But, ho -- the user must first prove that they are human by filling in their personal information on two other websites. [...] After you fill in your personal information -- anything from your address to your credit card number -- these types of sites will often turn around and sell it. Other times, sites that promise cheats or in-game money will download malware onto your computer. "

    Lol, this is my shocked face.

  • Signposts on the road to something (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Slugster ( 635830 ) on Wednesday February 19, 2020 @10:18AM (#59742814)
    Nobody cares too much about video game cheaters getting swindled, but there is a larger problem that is occurring here: in online business, it is quickly becoming more profitable to be deceptive than it is to remain honest.

    The main reason that a lot of people switched to buying online was because they could read online reviews--but those can be faked a number of different ways now.
    If you are an online merchant, you can buy reviews either way: good reviews for your own stuff, or shitty reviews for the competition.
    If you are using an online marketplace site, you can buy poor reviews to get your competitors kicked off the platform entirely.

    To top it all off, major online sellers are racing to the bottom of commodity merchandise sales, leading to the issues like counterfeit goods, serf workers and demolition-derby delivery drivers.


    For some reason I doubt that the solar panels on the HQ roof are going to make this business model sustainable...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DogDude ( 805747 )
      Yup. The Internet has turned into a giant open sewer. I've been predicting this (and thinking about it) for a few decades now, and I still have no idea what can be done about it.

  • One particularly psychedelic channel features a 3-D cat in a Russian hat advertising free in-game money, against a background of gaudy Russian text and a scrolling chat box.

    There's a very solid argument to be made that I shouldn't post this link, and there will be time for that later. Right now I'm watching a 3D cat lip syncing to some crazy Ivan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • I'm looking for an easy way though life. I don't want to work hard or learn anything. thanks for quick replies!

  • So how is it that YouTube gaming reached this state? I'm trying to think of the possible reasons.

    1: They literally don't have a single person in charge of content management. There's no way to prevent _al_l abuse of the system, but there's also no way anyone reviewing the system, or probably even just the metrics, shouldn't have noticed that 7 of the top 10 streams were automated content propped up by thousands of bots.

    2: The people at the Youtube Gaming department/division/whatever level realize that t

    • The priority at Youtube for content managing seems to be for political content. The moderators also have the overhead of dealing with the mass false reporting by an army of cancel culture SJWs. This implies the real possibility that they lack the resources or simply can't be bothered to care about cheat-scammers, as the likelihood of those ever causing another Carlos Maza style Ad-pocolypse is slim to none.

      Priorities.

    • The meld of #2 and #3 have not so much a greed element to them, as much as prior articles on YouTube's (and for that matter, most ads in general) decline in ad revenue per ad that is the issue. In the ad business, it's value that matters, and Alphabet's companies know very well that the advertising marketplace isn't going to buy their own internally generated numbers for too much longer. In fact, many companies are evolving to audit and verify the sources of those views, which revealed the presence of bot
    • Youtube it seems has a handful of problems that are hurting small creators and leaving a void for scammers to fill:
      1. They demonetise based on a certain set of behaviours such as swearing that are easy to avoid as a bot but hard to avoid when human. This kills off "real" content and allows exploitive content to survive.
      2. They incentivise viewing patterns - such as watching the whole video - that are easier to fake with bots than they are likely to occur naturally.
      3. They rabbit hole videos - IE if you w

  • Yet another high minded use for the internet (Score:3)

    by doubledown00 ( 2767069 ) on Wednesday February 19, 2020 @02:47PM (#59744040)

    The various creators and pioneers of the internet must be daily saddened to see what we do with their creation.

  • I started firing up my copy of Grand Theft Auto V on my Windows gaming laptop a bit lately, since I got a little bit "sucked in" to the multiplayer game mode after some of their recent additions like the casino, and them kicking the year off by giving players $1 million in the game just for logging in during a certain week. (I refused to pay in to those "shark" cards or any of that nonsense to spend real money on in-game credit or merchandise. But it really does force you to do some boring "grinding" thro

  • hi im new to the hole cheeting scene, LoL! culd ne of u guyz hook me up wit sum uber hax that i no u guyz have, LoL! thnkx -Velocity "there is no spoone" -The Matricks

  • If you feel the need to give out your freaking CC# because you are too lazy to do it the right way, then you get what you deserve.

      Now excuse me, I must play the world's saddest tune on the world's tiniest violin.

  • There can be variants, depends on audience. For example many people watch Dota2, CS GO or PUBG. But these games are from different genres. As for me I'm a fan of casino and I play by myself on these sites https://gbcasinos.co.uk/low-wa... [gbcasinos.co.uk] and also watch streams.
  • Hello! There are many games which people watch on Youtube. Most of them are popular variants like PUBG, World of Tanks, Dota 2, etc. I like all of them. Also gambling is really cool thing. By the way there are many streamers in casino too. I watch some of them quite often and play on https://wageringadvisors.co.uk... [wageringadvisors.co.uk] sometimes.

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