You know the phrase, “This is why we can’t have nice things?” It feels that even in the new year, people can’t get over themselves and realize that they’re hurting others and making themselves look evil by doing things that have no true merit and are instead a full-on con. What does this have to do with Baldur’s Gate 3? Well, as noted by VideoGamer, there is a “free-to-play port” of the game that is out on the App Store right now. It has the game’s name in the title and uses art of Astarion as the “header” image to ensure that people know what they’re looking at.
However, if you actually download the game and try to play it, you’ll first realize that you need to pay $30 to enjoy it, and if you’re foolish enough to do that, you’ll realize rather quickly that it’s NOT a mobile port of Larian Studios’ title. It’s just a knockoff game that someone made to try and get your money. If this kind of story sounds familiar, it’s because we did a really similar one recently via a certain game with Sun Wukong that got an incredibly blatant ripoff over on the Nintendo eShop.
VideoGame dove deeper into this and found that there are even more of these knockoff/fake games in the App Store and beyond, including one from a certain series by Rockstar Games. It’s frankly very shameful that this is happening, but sadly, we know it’ll keep happening until stricter uploading guidelines are done. Or, at the very least, if they’re changing the name and image after they get approved, they have to go through an extra “approval process” after every major change so that people don’t get conned.
Now, some might ask, “Are we sure that Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t getting a mobile port?” The answer is an emphatic “Yes, we do know that.” We know that because Larian Studios shut down that idea themselves. Plus, if you go to the app store location where this fake game is, you’ll notice it’s made by a third-party publisher, which is not how Larian handles things at all. Even in the past, when they made a mobile port for one of their RPGs, they did it themselves, not through someone else.
The lesson here, ladies and gentlemen, is that you need to be careful of what you “take a chance on.” Look up the people behind such projects or see if sites like ours have announced such a thing. It’ll save you money and frustration in the future.
