GTAVI 'Prepurchase' Scamming

Hi all,

I wanted to bring this up somewhere just to see if anyone else has been wondering the same thing. But with the confirmed release of GTAVI, I've been getting a recommended probably hundreds of livestreams where the creators all do the exact same thing:

1. Urge viewers to spam like and share the live, as well as send 'Galaxies' (or other in-chat gifts/stickers that cost real world money to purchase) to be bumped up in a 'line' of people waiting to be given a free game preorder,
2. They paste the viewers name, and console, into the pre-oder website and hit confirm,
3. Repeat.

I'm concerned about this for a number of reasons. The biggest question that comes to mind is that IF this is true, how are these creators able to spend thousands of dollars placing orders for people? Moreover, they never show the web address of the website they're supposedly using to purchase these copies. This leads me to assume that;

a) They aren't 'pre-ordering' anything at all. They're not using the Rockstar website to make these purchases. In fact, the supposed pre-order websites they're using on stream are fake sites designed specifically for the scam. These sites have a random domain and serve the purpose of doing a continuous loop of entering a name and console, hitting confirm, having that name and console be sent to the void, and allowing the same process to happen all over again from step 1.

b) These copies ARE in fact being pre-ordered. But the very second these streams end, the creators are hauling ass to cancel/refund these purchases. From what I understand, any game purchase can be refunded seamlessly up to 10-14 days before game release. This game isn't dropping until November.

I'm concerned by the predatory nature of this whole scheme. It's concerning seeing the number of people who willingly spend money on TikTok Live stickers/gifts (Galaxies of which cost about ~$15 usd and ~$23 aud respectively to buy) under the misconception they'll be given something in return. I think this is a big reflection on financial literacy and people needing to be more aware of WHEN and HOW to recognize scams, but it's also a reflection on how TikTok has been failing to protect viewers from spending money just to LOSE money on their platform.

Whatever the case may be, it's so jarringly clear that creators are taking advantage of the hype surrounding the games release, and therefore taking clear advantage of regular people who want to play the game but don't have 80+ dollars to spend on getting it themselves.

Curious to know if anyone has any thoughts on this, or any insight to share.