Dragon's Dogma 2 creates 'fake' players to rent your Pawn if no one actually wants to hire them.
Renting out Pawns is a crucial part of Dragon's Dogma 2 - you'll need to hire NPCs to have a more rounded out and balanced squad of archers, thieves, warriors, and so on, so you can face off against the toughest foes in the RPG. By the same token, other players can hire your main created Pawn to their squads in their games to bolster their ranks.
But what happens when no one wants to hire your Pawn? As the Reddit post below explains, Capcom quietly creates a 'fake' player of sorts to hire out your Pawn when players on your platform are not selecting them. You'll know a fake player has rented out your Pawn if the player's name is greyed out when your Pawn returns to you and reports their progress with other masters.
"Fake" pawn rentals are a thing from r/DragonsDogma
The fake Dragon's Dogma 2 players generated by Capcom can even give your Pawns ratings and gifts, just like regular players would. Weirdly, the counterfeit players can somehow create your Pawn's given quest, which the Pawn's owner has to manually set whenever they use a Riftstone, and before their Pawn departs to another world and master.
Capcom's own website even delves into this feature in a Q&A section. "Also, your main pawn may return from their travel beyond the rift, even if your pawn is not borrowed by another player. Under these circumstances, the borrower's name will only be displayed, and you will not have access to their information, such as their profile," the developer writes.
If you didn't know, this was also a feature in the original Dragon's Dogma in 2012. Pawn rentals between players were something that some would argue was well ahead of its time, and Capcom creating fake players to hire other players' Pawns and give them rewards and ratings is just further proof of how deep this system of cooperation between players goes in the two RPGs.
Elsewhere, Dragon's Dogma 2 players have quietly devised a way to warn others of the dreaded Dragonsplague - but it might not be enough.