Helldivers 2 is becoming a viral success. In case you haven’t noticed my previous article about server overload, with that success comes a predictable and boring swarm of vampires, scammers, profiteers, and cronies. doing. What you might expect. The most horrifying manifestation of this so far is the large amount of merchandise being sold on sites like Etsy using designs completely stolen from Helldivers 2.
It’s easy to check for yourself. This is a link that when you search for Helldivers on Etsy, you get literally hundreds of results. Most of them just plaster stolen concept art, official artwork, and game logos onto generic shirts and mugs to create the most boring, lowest-common-denominator merchandise possible.
Arrowhead CEO Johan Pierstedt faced the issue of the black market and asked if they were getting a cut. commented That they are not and he will be Open For merchandise manufacturers approaching Arrowhead for collaborations: “If you want to sell anything related to Helldivers 2, please contact the studio with a clear proposal and we’ll take it from there!”
The big problem is that these Etsy sellers haven’t even bothered to come up with a cool new legally distinguishable logo or a clever tagline to go with it. This would make a great, barely legal fan item for the gaming community. Perhaps making matters worse, Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead doesn’t sell its own official merchandise.
It’s not just official artwork and logos that are stolen. Fan art is a common target here as well. The dozens of entries are fan art and well-crafted memes stolen from Reddit and other social media posts, then plastered onto things like cheap, on-demand his prints on shirts and phone cases. The most common targets are all the clever propaganda posters that people create to support their favorite or other fronts in the Galactic War.
Of course, it’s not all bad. Some of it is derivative fan work done properly, probably owned by the creator, and doesn’t infringe on anyone’s copyright. But the overwhelming majority just copy the logo verbatim and paste it onto a dropshipped print-on-demand tat. The only thing the thief did there was upload the stolen image files.
Anyway, it’s all very depressing and nothing like that, read on about how Helldivers 2 is one of the most entertaining games in recent memory.
