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The story
A user who bought a “complete strategy guide” being sold on Amazon to coincide with the release of the Switch 2 version of ‘Elden Ring’ posted on X that the contents were sparse, like an instruction manual — no photos, no stat listings, no maps — and it became a topic of discussion on 5ch. The book reportedly ranked as high as #9 in Amazon’s “Game Fan Books” category, and thread posters pointed out that it was a self-published paperback that bypassed proper publishers, with content that appeared to be generated by AI. Some commenters noted that similarly shoddy strategy guides had caused a stir for other games in the past.
The new “complete strategy guide” released to coincide with the Switch 2 version of Elden Ring, pictured below ↓
This isn’t a strategy guide — it’s an ultra-simplified instruction manual.
No photos, no stats, no map.
Source: x.com / original post here
What people said
Are there really that many people who’d fall for something this obviously AI-made?
FromSoft fanboys, I swear…
This is probably one of those
Ah, I see 🫥
There’s strategy info all over the internet for free
Guess he really loves physical copies
They’re all over different games
Double shock — that someone actually bought it, and that it was made into an actual book at all
If it was ¥4000 as a joke buy it’d have been a good purchase I guess, whatever
If someone genuinely got scammed, they should be blaming Amazon
The ones who approve this stuff and make money while staying hands-off are the real villains here
>Amazon Paperback is a service that lets you publish paper books that get printed and bound on demand after an order comes in.
I wouldn’t buy it either, but why would you buy some sketchy book from a random no-name publisher instead of an official Dengeki guide from a proper publisher? (Dengeki is a well-known Japanese game-guide publisher)
Kind of nostalgic, honestly
Even the kanji in the main text at the bottom left isn’t right — you think this looks legit?
The cover is obviously AI-generated
It doesn’t look like a proper strategy guide to me
Can’t believe people actually buy these
Crazy that this kind of thing exists
So people probably think ‘a bit pricey, but I guess that’s normal’ and don’t question it
Could almost be fun to buy just the book without the game and try to imagine what it’s like
It’s AI, so it’s probably riddled with misinformation
I only use Yodobashi now (a major Japanese electronics/retail chain)
Amazon automatically prints and binds each copy on demand once an order comes in
The seller just generates it with AI and submits the digital file
Lately all you find are content-less affiliate-copy articles, so I kind of get the impulse to buy a strategy guide even one released back when the game was still getting updates
What… they didn’t even do anything wrong
Generative AI lies, and strategy sites have terrible, hard-to-navigate designs
And the result is buying an AI-generated strategy guide — what a cautionary tale lol
Real bookstores are still needed after all
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Amazon has a “paperback” self-publishing feature that lets individuals publish books without going through a publisher’s review process; each time an order comes in, Amazon prints and binds a single copy on its end. Because sellers only need to submit a digital manuscript, it’s technically possible to turn AI-generated text straight into a sellable book, and this kind of “AI-made strategy guide” for unreleased or already-released games has been pointed out for other titles in the past as well. In the thread, one point of debate was how little way there is to distinguish an official strategy guide put out by a publisher like Dengeki from one of these unofficial books before buying it. The cover design alone can easily be mistaken for an official guide, and it was noted that enough people bought this one for it to place near the top of game-related sales rankings. Some also pointed out that, given the declining usability of strategy websites and dissatisfaction with the accuracy of generative-AI chat answers, demand for physical strategy guides still remains strong.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Geha)) thread “Switch 2 User Buys Elden Ring Strategy Guide, Ends Up Deeply Regretting It.”
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