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It seems another mysterious developer hawking rip-offs on the Xbox store has been taken down, after NBA 2K23 fans discovered a bizarre title called "Nbasketball 23."
Nbasketball 23 seems to have hit the Xbox store sometime in October, judging by the user reviews captured in an image from Hu on Twitter. One review, from a user called DearMosquito17, is titled "I WILL ******* SUE YOU," and says "I thought this was 2k 23 but I wasted 50 dollars for this app you will speak to my lawyers soon."
Yo this is bugged out someone created a game with @NBA2K photo and selling it… @Xbox y’all need to take this out the store @Beluba @Ronnie2K pic.twitter.com/Mw4EYgHsO7October 23, 2022
It certainly looks like confusion with NBA 2K23 is what developer Sarp Apps was going for, here. The background image for the Nbasketball 23's store page was a promotional image of 2K23 cover star Devin Booker. The price was set at $59.99, though in the captured image it was marked down to $9.99. It's likely this was an effort to grab the impulse-buy interest of anyone who might've started typing 'nba' into the Xbox store search bar.
Nbasketball 23 was sadly(?) delisted sometime after Hu's tweet went viral, though there are at least some screenshots of what once was. Ah, who can forget the epic game when Smith, Duncan, John, and that guy without a name took on the legendary team of Mamerto, Mamerto, Mamerto, and Robert.
A quick Google search for Sarp Apps suggests that they had a range of titles available on the Xbox store, including Beamnp Drive Ambulance, Internet Cafe Computer Simulator 2022 3D, and Guide For Fall Guys Customization. The only one of the studio's games that seems to currently be available is Tractor Simulator 2022. While that one does have a logo bearing a pretty strong resemblance to the popular Farming Simulator series, it's not quite so egregious as Nbasketball.
This isn't the first brazen knock-off to hit the Xbox store. A terrible God of War rip-off called War Gods Zeus of Child, complete with Kratos, was delisted back in August. That developer, Dolaka LTD, also built cheap imitations of Pokemon, Mario, and V Rising, some of which are still available today.
Sadly, we'll never know if Nbasketball 23 ranked among the best sports games.
