People are being tricked into thinking FIFA 23 videos are real World Cup streams

[midian182]

WTF?! Just how realistic are sports games these days? Good enough to fool people into thinking they're watching the real thing and not a digital representation? In some cases, yes, apparently. Several YouTube channels have been streaming FIFA 23 matches while claiming they're real games streamed illegally from the soccer World Cup.

Vietnamese news site VNExpress (via PC Gamer) notes that one reader was tricked into thinking a streamed video of EA's game was a low-quality stream of a World Cup match. They found the channel by searching for Germany vs. Japan on Google.

"It wasn't until I read the comments on the livestream and watched the player's face close-up that I knew it was the image in the FIFA 23 game simulating the World Cup," they said.

It's pretty convincing in 240p, from a certain angle, if you squint, and are bit drunk

Posting videos taken from 'new PES' game eFootball and FIFA 23 to replicate real World Cup games appears popular—some add to the illusion by including YouTube's 'live' red dot mark next to their descriptions. A Vietnamese channel called Minute90Kplus has loads of them, with some videos attracting over 200,000 views, though it appears most viewers leave as soon as they discover they're watching a video game and not a real match.

Passing off game footage as the real thing happens often; the makers of combat sim Arma 3 recently had to ask players to stop creating and posting clips claiming to be from real wars. It's harder to trick someone with a sports title, but if you knock the quality down to 240p and when the camera is at a high angle, it does look passably real, kind-of. The whole illusion falls apart when the picture moves close to the players, who look concerningly mannequin-like and dead-eyed for humans.

It's not just Vietnamese channels carrying out this trick. English channel Football Live has 1.25 million people subscribed to its watch-along videos of fake matches. They also seem to show an ad every 5 seconds and often include links to very shady (non-digital) live sports streams and betting sites.

The videos likely violate YouTube's policies on misleading titles and descriptions, but some do still show up in Google searches for free streamed sports events.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/96901-people-tricked-thinking-fifa-23-videos-real-world.html

 

[Lionvibez]

Close but I would never take this for a real game.

 

[Nobina]

From the picture it seems realistic enough to fool people who aren't paying much attention, so, most people. Those are the same people that believe war footage is real and not from ARMA. What's next? GTA San Andreas footage depicting gang violence?

 

[toooooot]

Nah, if you play fifa, you can recognize moving patterns and graphic details specific to the game.
Height and different body shapes for example, fifa has few for all the players that are in the game when in reality body shapes are so different in real life.

 

[Vanderlinde]

It just shows how stupid Youtube is in the first place to even allow these practices. Everything for the views and ad revenue.

 

[Julnor]

They do this for every sports game and even wrestling. Nothing new. Youtube usually takes down illegal streams but will keep these things up, so anyone that is trying to pirate on youtube (which is a dumb person to begin with) is going to end up on these videos. It is easy monetization for the channel/video uploaders, and perfectly within youtube rules. You have to be really dumb and not a fan of whatever you're watching to mistake the videos for the real thing. And I don't really think stupid people doing stupid things should be news worthy.

 

[thelatestmodel]

To be fair, when playing FIFA 22 with certain match conditions, I do occasionally think "this actually does look real".

The phenomenon only lasts a second or two before you notice something video game-like, but credit to them, it does look stunning.

 

[PEnnn]

Players running like cartoon figures look real to many people??

No wonder many also believe the earth is flat and we never landed on the moon!

 

[Carlos GarPov]

You've got to be kidding me!

 

[Avro Arrow]

I don't know what to say about this. I have two comments in my head:

1) Congratulations to Konami for making this game look as realistic as it does.
2) How the hell can people not tell the difference?

 

[Hodor]

I remember seeing a football match in a shop window maybe 20 years ago, and thinking it was a real game. Then coming closer I saw it was a video game, and I was even more impressed. "Wow, this really looks like reality".

Now, I'm looking at this enormously more evolved version, and it looks cartoonish. I guess we all got used to recognizing games. So, if we reverse that, to someone who never played a computer/console game, this may be looking realistic. Especially if he's watching it on a small screen (smartphone).

 

[OortCloud]

No. Not even close. A story started by EA I expect.

Speaking of world cup - did you know Qatar murdered 6500 people in order to build the stadiums for the world cup.... 6500!
How are we ignoring this and playing football here. Only an organisation as corrupt as FIFA could carry on with this.
FIFA, Qatar and EA - what a lovely trifecta.