Streamers are tricking football fans into thinking FIFA 23 games are pirate World Cup streams

Clever YouTube channels have found a way to tap into World Cup fever, streaming fake football matches that have been simulated in FIFA 23. Some of these videos have racked up tens or even hundreds of thousands of views, most likely tricking people who are searching for live pirate streams of the World Cup (Google Trends confirms spiking interest in the term “World Cup stream” over the last week).

According to Vietnamese news site VNExpress, a reader noted that one such video streamed near the start of the World Cup fooled them into thinking it was simply a low quality stream. “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 (via machine translation).