Recently we reported on an alleged VR experience transferring players to the virtual reality world of Sword Art Online, all brought to you by IBM. It’s been brought to our attention that this is a hoax concocted by IBM Watson and the Sword Art Online team as a marketing stunt.

The Verge reached out to IBM to confirm the “whether the game is a real MMO in development or a shorter standalone experience.” the pr for IBM Watson responded:

It is the latter, involving an event from March 18th to 20th, 2016 in Tokyo that will allow a select group of participants to experience this VR game Sword Art Online, brought to life with IBM’s SoftLayer cloud service.

Let us not forget that early promotional material states that Dr. Akihiko Kayaba has made this all possible. However, Dr. Akihiko Kayaba is a character in Sword Art Online who created the fictional NerveGear VR system.

This being said, the team at IBM has released two rather unimpressive “tech demo” of the game:

The 208 lucky players have been reported to be using the VR tech since March 18th.

We’ll keep you up to date, but as of right now, this seems to just be a marketing scheme to lead up to the release of the new season of the Sword Art Online anime.

SOURCE