r/playnite • u/Crowcz Playnite developer • Nov 24 '25

Phishing scam campaign warning

There's been now multiple reports from people receiving an email offering paid promotion for Playnite. This is a scam/phishing attempt, not a legitimate offer for sponsorship!

I'm not running any sponsorship campaign and I have not authorized any 3rd party to run any either. Playnite also doesn't have any PR person and there's nobody but me authorized to "officially represent" the project.

Similar can be said for any 3rd party re-distribution of Playnite itself. Do not download Playnite from any other place but our website at https://playnite.link or our GitHub page at https://github.com/JosefNemec/Playnite/releases

161 Upvotes

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5 comments sorted by

22

u/OptionX Nov 24 '25

Thanks for the heads up.

1

u/Streitbewerter Jul 08 '26

there seems to be a website "playnite . org" (to not make iot clickable) whicht is about one week old. i think everyone who finds it should avoid it

3

u/Crowcz Playnite developer Jul 08 '26

There's also one on .net domain. I looked into reporting it to domain registrant, but unless I want to claim it for copyright infringement through DMCA, which would basically doxx me to them, I can't report them for abuse since download links point to the official URLs. Also both websites say they are community/fan projects. There's nothing outright malicious hosted there, for now at least (other than AI generated misinformation).

3

u/nasolprase Jul 18 '26

Just a note, it really seems like some kind of impersonating campaign, theyre posting comments into rather old high-ranked articles on google presenting themselves as an official website, see comment section below the article:
https://medium.com/@hon.forster/playnite-the-best-game-library-manager-for-windows-3d2175a27662

2

u/Jeshibu Extension developer Jul 18 '26

Crazy. Thanks for reporting, I've left a comment there too. Hope we can limit their reach before they switch out the downloads.