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Buyer Beware: Fake PS5 games being sold on Amazon

Justified

Justified

Saw the truth behind the copied door
Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,022
Atlanta
I purchased a new copy of Wild Hearts on Amazon and sold directly by Amazon (not "sold by" a third part storefront), and received an elaborate fake that was really a DVD-RW disc lol. It was plastic wrapped, came in a legit case and the disc cover art seems legit, as in it wasn't glued-on printer paper ( I tried to scratch it to see if it was paper and it was legit pressed on)

My PS5 sounded like it was fighting for its life trying to read the disc lol. That is what made me take it out and inspect it thinking the disc was dirty. First glance I knew something was off. I put it in my PC's disc drive (yea I still have one lol) and it came up as a blank DVD RW. SMH

nrEhz7K.png


Real PS5 game at the top, fake game at the bottom:

sbpNNhZ.png


View: https://i.imgur.com/nqUf8IU.mp4
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Musubi

Musubi

Unshakable Resolve - Prophet of Truth
Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,627
WTF

That is horrible. Hopefully you can get a replacement or your money back.
 
LossAversion

LossAversion

The Merchant of ERA
Member
Oct 28, 2017
10,718
That's weird. At least you should be able to exchange it no problem. Maybe it was an actual manufacturing mistake. Seems like a lot of trouble to go through for nothing. Unless Amazon is selling returns as new. Which... also seems like more trouble than it's worth.
 
RiderKairuu

RiderKairuu

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,083
I've had this happen to me when buying games from Target. Not sure how often it happens with Amazon but people do buy games and put blank cds in the case and re-shrinkwrap them to return. Super scummy.
 
nsilvias

nsilvias

Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,811
did you compare the quality of the paper itself to a legit copy op??

Sieffre said:
Sold by Amazon
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sold by amazon doest mean anything. amazon mixes their inventory with that of third party sellers for efficiency and cost reasons. its not uncommon to receive counterfeit items on amazon even whne you buy from sold by and delivered by amazon. this has been an issue for years on amazon
 
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nded

nded

Member
Nov 14, 2017
10,588
Yeah, seems rather well made for a return scam. Either an incorrect disk somehow slipped into the production line or there's a scammer somewhere flexing their printing capabilities.

Anyone have a picture of a working disk to compare this with?

Edit: Definitely some kind of counterfeit. The real disk doesn't have this artwork on it at all and the label ID PPSA-01491 is assigned to Assassin's Creed: Valhalla.
 
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Shwing

Shwing

Member
Oct 25, 2017
858
Regular DVDs and Blu rays are pressed, burnable media is not. This is definitely someone resealing and returning it.
 
Sieffre

Sieffre

Member
Oct 27, 2017
786
United States
PeakPointMatrix said:
Is that a common occurrence? Shipping a blank/faulty disk like that? Also, even if it was a manufacturer error, wouldn't it have been a blank Bluray instead?
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Of course it's not a common occurrence, but without knowing the manufacturing process, who knows what happened? It could be possible someone was carrying a box of bluray discs and ran into someone carrying a box of dvd-rw discs. Or maybe his disc drive is just misinterpreting the unpressed disc. Or the place they bought the blank bluray discs from ended up accidentally dropping a dvd-rw in with the mix. When I worked at a brewery, we bought empty glass bottles from a vendor. I saw one time a box of bottles that had one random clear bottle amongst all the brown ones. Mistakes can happen.

nsilvias said:
sold by amazon doest mean anything. amazon mixes their inventory with that of third party sellers for efficiency and cost reasons. its not uncommon to receive counterfeit items on amazon even whne you buy from sold by and delivered by amazon. this has been an issue for years on amazon
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Oh, I wasn't aware of this. I thought if it was sold directly by Amazon, it was their own inventory, and others that came from third parties were labeled as sold by the third party, and just shipped by Amazon. Regardless, the printed disc art looks too well made to be counterfeit to me.
 
Shwing

Shwing

Member
Oct 25, 2017
858
Sieffre said:
Of course it's not a common occurrence, but without knowing the manufacturing process, who knows what happened? It could be possible someone was carrying a box of bluray discs and ran into someone carrying a box of dvd-rw discs. Or maybe his disc drive is just misinterpreting the unpressed disc. Or the place they bought the blank bluray discs from ended up accidentally dropping a dvd-rw in with the mix. When I worked at a brewery, we bought empty glass bottles from a vendor. I saw one time a box of bottles that had one random clear bottle amongst all the brown ones. Mistakes can happen.


Oh, I wasn't aware of this. I thought if it was sold directly by Amazon, it was their own inventory, and others that came from third parties were labeled as sold by the third party, and just shipped by Amazon. Regardless, the printed disc art looks too well made to be counterfeit to me.
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A huge issue with rarer Blu-rays is convincing counterfeits.
 
skullmuffins

skullmuffins

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,426
Wild. Amazon's comingling stock shit is so bad the counterfeiters don't even care that their product will 100% not work.. it just has to look passable enough to get mixed in with the real item unnoticed?

I suppose this could still be a high-effort return... is the disc art actually printed on the disc? it's not a sticker? is the case and cover art legit?

OP's disc:

image.png



Real disc:

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NoobSauceG7

NoobSauceG7

Member
Feb 7, 2022
1,532
Amazon has been slipping with me for game purchases. Their "release day" games have not been coming to me on release day. Seeing this is shit. Long ago are the days of Amazon prime giving you release day and 20% off game orders...miss the good days.
 
PianoBlack

PianoBlack

Member
May 24, 2018
6,648
United States
Wild but not shocking. Amazon openly sells stuff like pirated DS ROM carts. I'm surprised the console makers/publishers haven't really gone after them more.
 
TheExtra

TheExtra

Member
May 14, 2020
696
The hell. That fake looks even better than the Official disc.

But yeah, that sucks. Hopefully, you can get a refund.
 
fulltimepanda

fulltimepanda

Member
Oct 28, 2017
5,811
I know printers a few years ago used to come with a cd/dvd tray so you could labels directly onto them, not sure how it is now. This sort of amazon return scam wouldn't be too hard to pull off tbh
 
Shoot

Shoot

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,559
Amazon Canada is rife with counterfeit USBs, SD cards and electronics so I wouldn't be surprised to see them selling fake discs as well.
 
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