Trap Plan, a video game marketing company, was caught deleting posts after the unprompted reveal that the key to its success when promoting WarRobots: Frontiers was the creation of fake Reddit accounts responsible for a wave of organic growth.
You read that right. On Nov. 9, Trap Plan’s CEO Pavel Beresnev took to the company’s own website to explain his peculiar strategy. The blog post, titled “How we promote WarRobots: Frontiers on Reddit” explains in detail how the company created over 40 posts of made-up players who’d supposedly come across the game and found it too interesting not to share. As caught by Kotaku, these posts were found on places ranging from the PCmasterrace subreddit to r/PlayStation5, and they had the goal of creating a splash “before the next Twitch activation.”
Beresnev explained how the team went to great lengths to actually play the game and record good gameplay moments that would strike players as authentic. “This created a steady stream of credible, varied content that matched Reddit’s organic tone,” he said.
These fake posts weren’t that easy to spot, as the company did a good job of diversifying its content, with various clips of movement, combat, and mech mechanics accompanied by what seemed like enthusiastic comments from real players. Moreover, Beresnev mentioned how the company intentionally avoided marketing the game in the conventional manner. Trap Plan didn’t do direct ads, opting instead for the most insidious method of trying to create a seemingly honest connection among gamers. Beresnev concluded that “most players didn’t even realize they were part of a marketing effort.”
Despite the successful campaign, trying to access that same post will take you to a 404. But players can still access the original post via the magic of the Internet Archive.
Sadly, there’s a lot of fake information you can get away with spreading on the Internet with no legal repercussions. This is far from the first attempt by a company to promote a game in what’s arguably a morally reprehensible manner. Still, it’s likely the first time we see a company attempting to promote itself by shooting itself in the foot.
In a statement to Kotaku, Beresnev explained that MY.GAMES, the people behind the development of WarRobots: Frontiers had nothing to do and did not sign off on Trap Plan’s Reddit marketing plan.
“This was entirely our initiative and not commissioned or endorsed by MY.GAMES in any way,” he wrote. “We understand this was a mistake and have since removed the case study. We sincerely apologize to MY.GAMES and the War Robots: Frontiers team for the misunderstanding and any confusion it may have caused.”
Beresnev also explained that “[the company’s] intention was to experiment with a more organic way of promoting games on Reddit — without using bots or fake accounts — and to build a new case study we could use in the future.”
