Thousands of viewers in Qatar who believed they were viewing illegal World Cup feeds were actually viewing pixelated recordings from the popular soccer computer game FIFA 23.

And over 40,000 french people alone ended up falling for the trick, which involved using headlines like "Live Germany-Japan on 23/11 Group E World Cup 2022," which actually matched the match at the World Cup (which Japan won, by the way), to link to YouTube channels that were broadcasting replays of FIFA 23 games.

FIFA 23 was illegally streamed with Vietnamese commentary

Surprisingly, the broadcasts in issue also included commentary of the FIFA 23 game in Vietnamese, but instead of raising viewers' suspicions, it merely reinforced their impression that the feed was illegal and had been intercepted from Vietnam.

One of the spectators confessed to being tricked, saying, "Until I saw the remarks in the chat, and the close ups of the players' faces, I didn't realize these were replays of FIFA 23 matches.

This is indeed a common technique used by pirate pages to earn "hundreds of dollars" during a World Cup game simply by playing FIFA 23, claims the Vietnamese news outlet VNExpress. They are less likely to realize it's a pixelated video game rather than merely a lousy feed of a real game in Vietnam, where connections are frequently unreliable and consumers are accustomed to low quality graphics.