Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but it’s not clear if Deep Silver was flattering or just busting on Grand Theft Auto V when it started sending tweets tagged with #GATV earlier this week. If you had to read that twice, it’s understandable – it says “GAT.” The Saints Row IV publisher took advantage of internet traffic on the day of GTA V’s launch gravitating to #GTAV on Twitter. And it had the angle to do it, drawing its hashtag from Saints Row IV character Johnny Gat.

In a way, Deep Silver is flattering GTA’s dominance of gamer mindshare when it comes to open world action games. It’s a category where Deep Silver is now competing after acquiring Saints Row from THQ. As a testament to just how big a blip the GTA V launch was on everyone’s radar yesterday, Ubisoft tried its own stunt on social sites, where it gave the game a nod while reminding people about its own next-gen open world game, Watch Dogs.

Deep Silver’s social stunt falls in line with what it has said about marketing Saints Row and how it wants to put its own stamp on the franchise by really drilling down on its zaniness. Yesterday’s #GATV madness started with a series of promoted tweets, including posts from Deep Silver head of marketing and PR, Aubrey Norris:

Plenty of people were calling Deep Silver’s tweets one of the most genius trolling moves ever.

One person on the thread shared this point of view:

Truth or troll, it’s hard to tell. That went for a lot of the thread, where tweets like these next two made you wonder just how much of what was going on was tongue in cheek, real typos, or just the diehard Saints Row community trolling the rest of us.