Deceptive advertising (informally coined as Game Fraud) is a controversial bait-and-switch act of luring players to visit a well-received and polished builder's place in return for a poorly received and misleading place, often unrelated and/or malicious. Most often, the builder's goal is to become notable or popular, or even convert earned tix to ROBUX. If the place does not have a game icon, then if you look on a page where you can see game icons, check the game icon to see what the place really is if the false advertised game does not have a game icon. Most fake games nowadays often try to convince the viewer to thumbs up and/or favorite the game, occasionally claiming if they like, favorite, or both, then they will get free admin, VIP, tickets, or ROBUX.
False Advertising Methods
Different tactics have been used to lure players to their places which have no connection to the content advertised.
False Thumbnail
- Main article: Misleading place images
Thumbnails are made for players to preview the creator's place and/or present game art, logos, and video previews via YouTube. However, some places have images that might be misleading and possibly may not represent the actual game.
Misleading Title
The game's title represents what the place is about. Deceptive places have titles describing activities that one could possibly try if such a place was created.
Some misleading games use the bravery trick, where the title proclaims "DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME", making some players scared. Lots of people post comments about these kinds of games, mostly in Town and City games.
Disabling Comments
Some players disable comments to prevent players from finding out its misleading. This trick grants said player more visits & more tix. However, some players look at the negative votes to determine. They can also look in the comment section of a badge or gamepasses
Game Teleporters
These types emerged recently, they either teleport a player through a ROBLOX teleporter, or a script. Often, the owners of these places are alts of the user owning what the place teleports to. They, again, use images from Google Images and don't preview the teleporter. These places often have 1 player only, so if you see this, and the image is from Google Images or another place, it is likely a Game Teleporter trying to take you to another place. They are usually on Top Rated rather than Most Popular, thanks to the teleporter, or teleporting script. This can occasionally result in ROBLOX crashing. Then ROBLOX shuts down.
Like-Bots
Like-Bots are bots that automatically thumbs up a place to hit the top area of Top Rated. Often, places that use Like-Bots are Game Teleporters. An easy way to find them is to look at the visits compared to likes. If the visits are lower than likes, then the owner has used a Like-Bot. However, as of April, the web team adjusted the algorithm for calculating the Top Rated section, which caused this method to not get onto the Top Rated section, as well as some of the bot accounts that had their places botted permanently deleted.
Infamous False Advertisers
- Main article: Controversial Players and List of Bait and Switch Users
Jaredvaldez4 is disputably the most notable deceptive builder. Through his advertising, he has gained tens of millions of place visits over three accounts. He is recognized for stealing other builder's games, and using false advertising with them in order to get plays and tickets of his own. In the past, he has stolen a number of games, including Paintball, The Undead Coming, and Welcome to the Town of Robloxia. People assume jaredvaldez4 quit ROBLOX after his last account; jared2valdez4 was banned in April 2013.
PabloAndJuan's game rose to the front page in less than one hour, which was a generic building survival game, the title and images on her place change often between descriptions that are designed to coerce players to visit the place. As well as the deceptive advertising; she has also sold overpriced VIP T-shirts to her places. However, they were ineffective and did not benefit the player well.
Tactics to finding a false game
Hate it when you run into a false game? Well, here are some ways to avoid these games:
- Look at the thumbnail(s). These games will have thumbnails containing a heavy amount of freemodels, a thumbnail that's incredibly easy to make, or a thumbnail that was obtained from the internet.
- Check to see if the comments are enabled. Most, if not all misleading games will have comments disabled to avoid players warning others that the game is fake. If comments are disabled, be cautious. They may just be disabled due to spammers.
- If comments are enabled, look at the comments. If players are claiming that it's false, the game is probably false.
- Do not click any links in the comments. These do not relate to a game being false at all and are often spam links leading to keyloggers/viruses.
- The most obvious one is to look at the "likes" and "dislikes," as it should tell a player that a game is fake, although this tactic does not always work as many false places will have more likes than dislikes.
- This method can only be performed if the creator is careless. If the game has multiple thumbnails that do not relate at all with each other or the title, the game will most likely be fake.