When you’re a name as big as s1mple, there are always going to be copycats looking to piggyback on your success. Recently, a variety of fake s1mple giveaways hosted on YouTube has caused the now inactive GOAT of Counter-Strike to head online and request they be removed.

Thus far, YouTube seems to only give out bot responses and ignore the reports.

Credit: BLAST Premier

Fake giveaways prompt pleas from S1mple himself

After noticing the fake s1mple giveaways, the S1mple took to X to post a screenshot of the issue.

These channels look official at first glance, with large subscriber counts you might expect to see from the player. This is despite s1mple himself only streaming on Twitch. Upon clicking the livestreams, they appear to be a re-run of old s1mple streams, which only adds to the illusion of legitimacy.

Biggest giveaways still on YouTube, @YouTube @YouTubeGaming do something with this, people still getting scam, i stream only on Twitch. | @s1mpleO on Twitch.

In the chats of these streams, the fake s1mple account posts a link, which leads to a fake skin site. Connecting your account to this is how the scam is successful. Most people won’t be fooled by the fake s1mple giveaways. But if even one player is scammed as a result of this, then it’s bad news for the community.

YouTube’s Inaction

Despite s1mple appealing straight to YouTube, the company’s response was poor at best. It directed the player to the official reporting tool, in a reply that felt like it could’ve been written by a bot. Even the GOAT CS player struggles to get a human response from YouTube!

A quick YouTube search shows that these fake s1mple giveaways are still prevalent on the site, almost a week after the player first brought attention to them. It’s hard to believe that YouTube has any real intention of getting rid of these accounts for good. Even when one is banned, another seems to step up in its place.