Amazon's marketplace has become a dumping ground for AI-generated "guidebooks" hawking strategies for games that haven't even shipped—or in some cases, don't exist beyond a reveal trailer. The Kotaku report highlights listings for Alien: Isolation 2 (announced just weeks ago at Summer Game Fest 2026 with no release date), Control: Resonant, and Gears of War: E-Day, complete with AI-crafted covers and prose that opens with the immortal line about crafting a "high-converting Amazon-style book description."

These aren't preemptive strategy tomes built on developer access. They're novel-length hallucinations stitched from Wikipedia entries, complete with phantom features like "Survival Mechanics" or system requirements chapters for unreleased titles. One "author"—George D. Brogon—has pumped out entries across both upcoming and released games, while Donald C. Campbell's catalog includes everything from Star Fox to Hell Let Loose: Vietnam. Rick from Rick's Game Backlog actually bought a couple, documenting table-of-contents hyperlinks, zero images, and filler lore that reads like a bad fanfic.

The real scam is the placement: these pop up in recommendations tied to legitimate pre-orders, priced at $20-plus, ready to fleece parents or casual buyers who don't know better. Amazon yanked some after complaints, only for them to reappear. This isn't isolated slop—it's a scalable grift exploiting the same storefront that can't police its own recommendations while pouring billions into OpenAI.

Genuine guides require early builds and actual reporting. These are just automated cash grabs preying on hype cycles before the first patch drops.