{"id":285007,"date":"2025-11-11T09:26:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T09:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/285007\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T09:26:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T09:26:11","slug":"game-marketing-agency-admits-to-using-fake-reddit-accounts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/285007\/","title":{"rendered":"Game Marketing Agency Admits To Using Fake Reddit Accounts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trap Plan, a large video game marketing company, admitted that it used multiple fake Reddit accounts to help promote a game called WarRobots: Frontiers, pretending to be \u201cauthentic\u201d fans and players who just happened to discover the mech game and wanted to share it with others. Trap Plan has since deleted the post, but not before folks on Reddit spotted it.<\/a><\/p>\n

On November 9, Trap Plan<\/a> CEO and \u201cmarketing expert\u201d Pavel Beresnev posted a short article to the agency\u2019s official website. The post, titled \u201cHow we promote WarRobots: Frontiers on Reddit,\u201d goes into detail about how the agency used multiple Reddit accounts to create over 40 posts across multiple subreddits, including r\/pcmasterrace and r\/PlayStation5, to create \u201ca wave of organic visibility before the next Twitch activation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe content varied from short clips and GIFs to\u00a0\u2018I found this game\u2026\u2019 discovery-style posts,\u00a0screenshot threads, and\u00a0light discussion prompts about tactical mech combat and movement mechanics,\u201d explained the CEO. \u201cWe avoided direct promotion and focused on\u00a0native conversation formats. Players discussed the game naturally \u2014 asking questions, comparing it to\u00a0Titanfall\u00a0and\u00a0MechWarrior, and sharing opinions about tactical mechanics.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Beresnev, in order to make the posts feel \u201cauthentic,\u201d the team played the game, recorded footage, and posted about what they had played. \u201cThis created a steady stream of credible, varied content that matched Reddit\u2019s organic tone,\u201d said Beresnev.\u00a0 After sharing some stats about the campaign\u2019s effectiveness, the CEO concluded the post by saying, \u201cMost players didn\u2019t even realize they were part of a marketing effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

At some point in the last 24 hours, the post was seemingly deleted from Trap Plan\u2019s website.<\/a> If you try to read the Reddit marketing article now, it just takes you to a 404 page. However, it was saved by someone via the Internet Archive<\/a>, allowing us to see the post as it appeared on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Kotaku has contacted both Trap Plan and WarRobots developer My.Games about the post and the Reddit marketing strategy.<\/p>\n

As many pointed out on Reddit, this is far from the first time we\u2019ve heard about a marketing agency or publisher using fake accounts to create an astroturf campaign for a video game<\/a>. But it is odd to see a marketing agency\u2019s CEO so publicly and directly confirm what was done and how it was done. It makes you wonder how many social media posts on sites like Reddit and Twitter are actually written by real fans and how many were trying to trick you into becoming part of a larger marketing campaign.<\/p>\n

Update; 11\/10\/2025, 3:00 p.m. ET:\u00a0In an email to Kotaku, Trap Plan CEO Pavel Beresnev explained that while the company did work with My.Games on a marketing campaign, \u201cany Reddit-related activities\u201d were handled \u201cindependently\u201d by the marketing agency without approval from My.Games.<\/p>\n

Our intention was to experiment with a more organic way of promoting games on Reddit \u2014 without using bots or fake accounts \u2014 and to build a new case study we could use in the future. Unfortunately, when publishing the case study on our website, we wrongfully mentioned MY.GAMES and War Robots: Frontiers, which created a misleading impression that these activities were done on their behalf.<\/p>\n

This was entirely our initiative and not commissioned or endorsed by MY.GAMES in any way. 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trap Plan, a large video game marketing company, admitted that it used multiple fake Reddit accounts to help…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[150449,1275,250,74,150450,150451],"class_list":["post-285007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-astroturf","tag-marketing","tag-reddit","tag-technology","tag-trap-plan","tag-warrobots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}