Malwarebytes warns that scammers are now trying to exploit the game from Rockstar and Take-Two.

There are still five months left until the console version of Grand Theft Auto VI launches, but that has clearly not stopped numerous websites from promising eager fans that they can get early access to the game now for a certain amount of money. Cybersecurity company Malwarebytes warns that these offers are nothing more than scams. A new wave of scam websites is offering VIP early access to the next Grand Theft Auto game in exchange for an inflated price of several hundred dollars, payable in cryptocurrency.

Malwarebytes also shared several images of the scam websites in question. One of them exploits Grand Theft Auto VI, MrBeast, and Lego at the same time. Naturally, people who pay receive nothing. Worse still, because payment is made in cryptocurrency, there is no way to recover or report the loss. The money disappears and cannot be recovered.

Malwarebytes employee Stefan Dasic called Grand Theft Auto VI the perfect bait for scams of this kind. Grand Theft Auto is one of the largest video-game franchises in the world, with hundreds of millions of copies sold, and 13 years have already passed since the launch of Grand Theft Auto V. Anticipation for Grand Theft Auto VI is enormous, and scammers are simply exploiting that excitement.

It may seem as though this type of scam is too obvious for anyone to fall for, but people do not know what they do not know. Burning desire can override levelheaded caution, while the flowery language used on such scam sites encourages impulsive decisions. They also look fairly credible, and the situation is complicated further by the fact that it has become very common in gaming to preorder a more expensive edition in order to gain early access to a new game.

According to Dasic, Malwarebytes has no information on how many people visit these sites, but the key point is that, like all scams, they survive because they work. Dasic is shocked when he sees the scams that manage to fool people. There will always be at least one person who falls for one, whether they are too young, too immature, probably not well informed enough, or simply want to be the first to get hold of something before everyone else.

Source: PC Gamer, Malwarebytes