In shocking news from the music industry, French house duo Daft Punk have today been exposed as a clever marketing ploy to sell branded merchandise.

The news broke this afternoon after a top secret file was leaked from within Virgin Records, which confirmed that the duo’s entire career was in fact a hoax and a marketing tool to sell tacky branded merchandise on their web site.

“This has to be one of the most intricate and well executed hoodwinks of all time,” claimed music journalist Peter Gaffney earlier. “To find out that such an acclaimed act, whose career spans three decades, were actually just a clever sales strategy by a record label is a bit of a shocker to say the least.”

“It’s all very obvious now, when you look at their web site all the clues are there,” continued Mr. Gaffney. “You can literally buy anything from Daft Punk christmas decorations to Daft Punk pens to Daft Punk hand sanitiser on there, yet there’s very little mention of music. We’ve clearly been duped.”

According to unconfirmed reports, there have been several different variations of the duo since their emergence in 1997 with the release of their multi-platinum album Homework.

“Daft Punk have always been played by actors,” explained an unnamed Virgin Records employee. “I think we’re onto the seventh or eighth different version of Daft Punk now. Some of the actors have actually gone on to have quite successful careers. We did consider using actual robots but it just didn’t make sense economically.”

“All of the music has been produced here in France by various members of the French house hierarchy,” confirmed the source. “The quality of tunes has always been important to us because people won’t by a snap back baseball cap with some random goober who made a forgettable tune back the 90’s logo on it, so we’ve always been very careful to choose the right person for the job.”

In related news, thousands of French music fans were left in shock after witnessing the popular producer Flat Eric being anally fisted on the Paris Metro, however, they were later calmed down after discovering that Flat Eric is actually a puppet.