GTA copycat Paradise is an alleged crypto scam, yet continues to gain Steam wishlists

rockpapershotgun.com:

An upcoming life sim which claims to be a competitor to Grand Theft Auto VI is continuing to amass followers and wishlists on Steam, despite the game being unmasked as a vehicle for a dodgy cryptocurrency. Paradise is marketed as a third-person game set in a sunny modern city, where you can speak to any NPC via microphone on the street and get stilted responses powered by artificial intelligence. You will supposedly drive sports cars, shoot guns at people, and accrue in-game cash. But its more outlandish claims attracted immediate scrutiny from video creators who found countless inconsistencies in the marketing material. The game has since been removed from the Epic Games Store, presumably for breaking many of the store's rules. But it's still on Steam, and somehow clambering steadily up the wishlist ladder in defiance of its many red flags.

Even at a surface glance, Paradise looks like a Grand Theft Auto Online pretender with added AI goop - not particularly appealing when placed next to Rockstar's high quality and "hand crafted" cityscapes. Here's the early trailer for the game:

As you can see, it's very "we've got Los Santos at home". Many elements, including the minimap, map text, and even the beach umbrellas, look identical to those found in either GTA V or the trailer for GTA VI. The company have even copied the music and motto from a fan-made trailer for a now defunct GTA roleplaying server, which was itself called "Paradise Roleplay".

The biggest tell lands at 1:20, when the narrator announces that you'll "earn money and crypto" while the player character strolls into a bank. Subsequent trailers have downplayed the crypto element, and the same trailer on Steam has been edited to exclude that particular word, probably to abide by Valve's rules on marketing cryptocurrency. The company behind Paradise, Ultra Games, say they're no longer going to ship it with cryptocurrency in mind but, as we'll see, the game itself seems to barely matter.

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