Scam of the day: gamepsvita.com … more surveys for you, more money for them

I’ve recently started a new series of articles where I’ll debunk fake PS Vita websites, which all promise to you free PS Vita games, Full Vita ISO downloads, the ultimate Vita hack or whatnot. As I’ve stated in my previous article, if something looks too good to be true, then it’s probably the case. Independently of each person’s opinion regarding piracy, you should be aware of these scam websites and avoid them at all cost. When some “people” (usually those are actually the owner of the site trying to advertise their ***) recommend them, I strongly recommend to reply and point people to this article. If you don’t stop pirating for the game developers, at least do it for the health of your computer…

My target today is gamepsvita.com and its dozens of associated websites. I intentionally am not linking to this site and recommend you don’t go there, for various reasons, including the fact that you could end up installing malware, but also because that would indirectly boost their traffic, which is what these people expect.

Why they do this

No surprise here, we’re in the same concept as most of these scam websites: they are trying to boost traffic to their website, and make money out of it through some shady advertising companies, typically involving surveys. gamepsvita.com, just like other similar scam websites, pretends to offer you to download vita games for free, which, we will show, is a blatant lie, but that doesn’t really matter to them as they are just after your clicks.

As usual, when it’s too good to be true…

How they make money

The scam network behind gamepsvita.com appears to be more advanced to me than psvitaisogames.com which I debunked previously. Although their tactics to make money are similar (clickbank shady affiliates links, paid surveys), they also appears to have a web of satellite websites which is more advanced than other scammers, which seems to contribute to boosting their traffic. More on that later, I’ll first describe how they make money.

scam website gamepsvita.com is making money through two main channels: paid surveys and clickbank affiliate links.

• Paid surveys: gamepsvita.com pretends you will get a download link for a Vita iso or a Vita free game – that never happens –  after filling a survey, for which they get paid once you complete the survey.
• clickbank affiliates: gamepsvita.com also pretends you can skip the surveys entirely and get dozens of free Vita games if you purchase their partner’s tool called GameBackupSystem. You’ll notice this is the same tool that was being promoted by other scamming website psvitaisogames.com, and, again, not only is that tool completely unrelated to the Vita, there’s a high chance it is either a Virus or some stolen free tools repackaged into something else. Either way, that tool is not worth the money they’re asking for it.

You’re never going to see the next screen. And if you do, I hope for your computer you don’t actually download whatever they have for you

gamepsvita.com appears to me as one of the most advanced scamming networks around the PS Vita. The website itself seems to be better organized than its competitor, and tries to target more gullible people. They for example pretend to have downloads, not only for pirated games, but also for Android on the PS Vita, or iOS on the PS Vita. Their iOS “download” also goes as far as pretending that this is an official app created by Apple themselves. Scam website gamepsvita.com also pretend to have downloads for “homebrews”, “PS3 games that run on the Vita”, and other *** like that. Don’t bother checking, none of that works, the site is as empty as the brains of people who believe such fakes.

A new official software from Apple, Inc. Not yet available on iTunes or the PSN, but apparently these guys have it! That has to be the real deal!

How you get scammed

It goes without saying that none of the download links on that site actually work. By the time you realize this, you’ll have filled a survey (that takes up to 20 minutes even if you answer randomly and as fast as you can!) and they’ll have made money from your time. From what I could see, some of the surveys are handled by legit companies, but it doesn’t matter because answering the survey does not actually let you get anything from gamepsvita.com. Their “waiting bar” pretends that it’s waiting for you to complete the survey, but unsurprisingly, completing any of the surveys doesn’t unlock anything.

You might end up being frustrated, after all, so many people in their comments section say that it works (obviously, those are all fake accounts), you end up believing maybe you made something wrong, try another survey (they get more money in the process), and, if you’re really stupid, end up trying their “Download Free PS Vita games without survey” link, which will give you nothing but a set of “tools” that have nothing to do with the PS Vita and that you’ll never use (“Game Backup System”)

Why, yes, you’ve taken my free time, please do take my money too!

At the end of the process, you’ll have wasted somewhere between 30 minutes and 1 hour, potentially some money, and, if you’re part of the unlucky ones, you’ll have installed some malware as well. Additionally, I believe they have a similar clickjacking system that makes you “like” their facebook page without ever clicking on a “like” icon (which is breaking the T&C of Facebook, but these people probably don’t care)

How they pretend to be legit

What’s probably more dangerous than their scamming techniques is the amount of external sites pointing to gamepsvita.com. The creators of this site have gone through extensive efforts to create a “network” of other sites that either redirect to gamepsvita.com or contain the same content, sometimes in a different language. This contributes to artificially boost their legitimacy, in both the eyes of regular users and Search engines (“many sites point to this site, it must be legit”). So far I have detected the following urls associated to scam website gamepsvita.com:

• psvitafreegames.com (scam)
• jeuxclub.com (scam)
• gamepsvita.com (scam)
• telechargerjeuxpsvitagratuit.com (scam)
• facebook.com/Psvita.Hack (scam)

All the urls above are associated to the gamepsvita.com website, and should be considered as harmful and dangerous.

In addition to this web of scam urls, gamepsvita.com does the same as other scam Vita iso websites: fake comments, facebook page with thousands of “likes” from either fake accounts or unsuspecting people, youtube/dailymotion videos which keep claiming this works, and random comments on (legit) scene websites where moderators are not paying attention.

Fake comments, either from fake accounts, or people who got paid on fiverr to do the job.

Conclusion

You will not find any free PS Vita game on gamepsvita.com, only endless surveys that will make you lose some time while the scammers laugh to the bank. Keep in mind that if a technique to pirate Vita games existed in such a “visible” way, scene websites like us (independently of our opinion about piracy) would mention it regularly, actually we would probably be all over the place about it.

It’s funny, in a way, that the only reason these sites are actually popular is the same reason we know they are fake: pirating Games on the vita is currently not possible. This means that legit “rom” download sites don’t exist for the Vita now, which also leaves only these scam websites on the playground…

Verdict: gamepsvita.com is 100% fake (will not provide the service they claim to provide) and dangerous (has malware and viruses). Avoid at all costs. The same can be said for its network of sites: psvitafreegames.com, jeuxclub.com, gamepsvita.com, telechargerjeuxpsvitagratuit.com. Their facebook page in itself is not dangerous, but should be avoided.