Don't be fooled by Google, there's no Starfield open beta you can "play now"

If I go to Google right now and type in "Starfield open beta," the top result would have me believe that I can hop on and play the big Bethesda RPG that doesn't come out for another four months and change. Sadly, this is a lie. There is no Starfield open beta. Not yet anyway.

"Don't miss out on this exciting adventure. Play now. Enjoy action with your friends. Open world," reads the description under a sponsored Google search result that promises you can "play starfield now." And yes, the 's' in Starfield is lowercased here. And no, Starfield co-op doesn't exist, despite what this very shady Google result suggests. 

Our pals at PC Gamer were tipped off to this obvious scam. The website propagating this lie is called bizongrow dot com, and you definitely shouldn't go there. If you do click on its Starfield open beta scam link, you'll be redirected to "starfięld dot com," cleverly coded with an accented 'e' in the URL. There you'll find a super sketchy-looking "demo" button which, if clicked, will download an executable file to your PC that you'll be sad to learn isn't really a Starfield beta and is definitely a pile of malware.

I can promise you that if there really was a Starfield open beta, we here at GamesRadar+, along with every other gaming outlet under the sun, would tell you about it. A public beta for a single-player game like Starfield would be strange to begin with, though Bethesda hasn't ruled out a demo of sorts ahead of the game's September launch. Still, we have no indication that anything like that is actually going to happen.

Starfield launches on Xbox Series X/S and PC on September 6.

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