In recent months, there has been a seemingly sudden uptick in scams and hacking going on in the fighting game community. Prominent figures in the FGC have been taking to social media to let fans and the rest of the community know that their identities and in several cases, their YouTube channels, are being hijacked and used for unscrupulous activities.
Things came to a head this week as a handful more cases popped up, including the hacking of popular content creator Rooflemonger’s YouTube channel, and those affected have been actively discussing what happened to them and informing the people on how to try and avoid similar situations. So, what’s going on exactly?
We started noticing a handful of scattered reports of prominent FGC figures being impersonated on Discord a few months back. In October, fighting game legend Justin Wong put out a tweet showing that someone had used one of his pictures as their profile picture and used a name that is a slight variation of his own to impersonate him and reach out to other users.
Somebody is impersonating me 🙁 pic.twitter.com/kfeg5363Ek
— Justin Wong (@JWonggg) October 23, 2024
Others, like Brian_F and JMCrofts, also came forward more recently to caution fans when being contacted on Discord or other social media platforms. Both content creators have had fans of theirs reach out to them to thank them for messaging them privately, which came as a big surprise considering it wasn’t actually Brian and JM, but people impersonating them to scam their fans.
I wanna reiterate this as well since I’m still getting people asking if I’m the one messaging them on Discord. It’s not me, it’s a scammer, stay safe! https://t.co/QJae8ZBuS7
— John Crofts (jmcrofts) (@crofts) December 14, 2024
I have seen several claims of Discord scammers from various content creators in the FGC as of late, and each time it seems the goal of the offender is to gain the trust of the victim likely to trick them into giving up sensitive information about themselves.
Beyond the Discord scammers, another big issue for FGC content creators has popped up in recent months. Prominent and successful creators seem to be having their YouTube channels targeted by hackers who ultimately aim to take over these platforms and use their reach to push the hackers’ latest scams.
Jiyuna shared a tweet this week that lists out the main content creators here in the FGC that have all had their YouTube channels hacked in recent times. This includes the likes of the Birds (pro Street Fighter 6 players AngryBird and BigBird), Rooflemonger, HookGangGod, and more.
List of FGC Members who got their YouTube hacked (so far):
-AngryBird/BigBird
-HookGangGod
-Spooky
-KizzieKay
-Rooflemonger
-LordKnightScary stuff, be careful out there.
— J I Y U N A (@jiyunaJP) December 13, 2024
What’s very interesting about these YouTube channels being hacked is that there seems to be a leading reason as to why and how this is happening. It’s not just a random data breach, but instead, several of the victims have claimed it’s stemming from deceitful and fake sponsorship opportunities.
After BigBird managed to recover his YouTube channel, the pro player took to Twitter to detail what likely lead to the hack happening. Apparently, someone posing as a Corsair representative reached out to the player on Twitter to offer a sponsorship deal, which lead to a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) being signed via an online docusign website.
Several of those who have been hacked have reported similar scams that lead to their YouTube channels being hijacked, and from what I’ve gathered, things basically break down like this.
Someone takes on the identity of an actual representative from one of these major companies in our fighting game space (for products like headsets, microphones, streamer gear, etc.) by combing over the real social media and business profiles for these people.
They create a legit-looking account based off of the representative’s details, use their profile pictures, and even have followers and a presence online (though digging deeper often shows that each account following these people tend to have very low or no followers themselves as well as other potential red flags).
On the surface, though, they make things look as legitimate as possible, which eventually leads to DM-ing the content creator (usually through Twitter) and trying to set up a partnership deal.
When the creator agrees, the scammer will send a link to sign an NDA through these DMs (which is another red flag as these things are most often done via Gmail). When the creator clicks the link, they are prompted to download the contract in order to sign it, and doing so actually downloads an executable program that gives the scammer access to the creator’s credentials.
You’ll definitely want to read through the entire Twitter thread from BigBird below as he does a great job of detailing exactly what and how this happened to him.
Successfully managed to restore our YouTube channel, thank god
Shoutouts to YouTube creator support for being responsive through emails!
However, I figured out how I got hacked, sharing for awareness
Thread
— Adel (@Bigbird_fgc) October 17, 2024
In the case of Rooflemonger, the hacker quickly locked him out of his YouTube channel and seemingly began deleting his videos in order to put their own videos up. This scammer was/is heavily pushing a crypto currency scam, and started live streaming shortly after the hack took place as a means of getting as much reach out of this opportunity as possible.
Another popular content creator, Brian_F, just released a video that details this entire situation as well. According to Brian, he did not fully get scammed himself, but came about as close as anyone would ever want to get to it happening.
Brian’s case was unique in that he had reached out to several streaming equipment companies in months prior to hopefully set up some partnership deals for his channels. One of these companies seemingly got back to him and had the same pitch and process as the scammers detailed above, but some of the aforementioned warning signs made Brian very suspicious.
After doing a ton of research, Brian was ultimately convinced that the Zoho link he received to docusign the contract was authentic, so he clicked the link and hovered over the contract without actually clicking on it to download. When he did so, he noticed that the extension lead to an executable file, which is 100% not what is supposed to be there.
An executable file, for those unaware, is what is used to install programs onto your PC. There is zero reason why downloading a contract PDF would ever logically use an .exe, and that is a clear sign that the link Brian was sent was indeed nefarious.
After realizing this, Brian bowed out and took a closer look at the Zoho link he was sent. When comparing it to an actual docusign link from this website, he noticed a very slight variation in the one he was sent, which was full confirmation that it was indeed a scam.
We also highly encourage you watch Brian_F’s full video below for maximum awareness.
Lastly, HookGangGod — who was among the content creators who got hacked recently — shared a tweet today that provides an extra bit of crucial information you need to know.
If you do end up going through this yourself and get your YouTube channel taken over, be sure to do this once you have recovered it.
“Once you recover your YouTube account after they hacked it, check thru your permissions and see if they added themselves as a manager,” Hook begins. “They can steal it right back like this even after you delete cookies. They’ll add multiple accounts too.”
Once you recover your YouTube account after they hacked it, check thru your permissions and see if they added themselves as a manager. They can steal it right back like this even after you delete cookies. They’ll add multiple accounts too
— HookGangGod (@HookGangGod) December 14, 2024
