Following the incident of “Resident Evil Requiem (Evil Ghost Castle: Requiem/Resident Evil: Requiem)” where “a fake in-game URL was preemptively registered by players”, “Pragmata (Consciousness Existence)” has almost the same situation again. Players found a string of words on the game board that could be identified as a URL. As a result, someone actually registered the domain and made it into a spoof content for the entire site.
Click to enter directly into the meme universe!
The article describes that there are a large number of dynamic billboards in the second main area of ”Pragmata”. One of the “Earth Hidden Gems” billboards has the words “horse racing” under it that can be read as a URL. The URL now leads to an unofficial fan page, full of memes about characters such as Wesker and Leon, and labeled as a fan-made project unrelated to Capcom.
The pattern exactly replicates the last rollover
A similar incident happened in “Castle of Evil: Requiem” a few weeks ago: players found the URL in the game and registered first. After that, every time someone curious to enter it, it was equivalent to diverting traffic to the other party. Now that “Pragmata” is happening again, it is equivalent to letting go of the basic line of defense of not being able to register a fictitious website again.
Players laugh, but this is actually a brand control issue
It’s fun to just look at the meme site, but for big companies, content that can be identified as URLs in the game may be occupied by third parties if the domain policy is not processed first. It’s fine that it’s a meme site today, but if it’s directed to a malicious page tomorrow, it will hurt players’ trust and brand safety. This is no longer an Easter egg anecdote, but a preventable error in operational details.
Capcom is good at burying easter eggs, but the domain is protected as if they were not buried.
The topic of “Pragmata” itself is still heating up. This kind of “reverse exploitation by players” incident brings traffic in the short term, but in the long term it is a warning to management. If the official does not complete the process (such as pre-registration, reserved domain pool, URL format specification), every work in the future may be slapped in the face again by the same trick.