there has always been production variants that were real but unauthorized produtions. "fakes" always had grades of quality from real good to laughably badAnd the fakes now are close to the real ones outside of a few differences that a lot of people wouldn’t be able to tell.
when I worked a nike we literally used to dissect shoes and examine them from the inside out when people did the warranty returns but even from the early 2000's you could get high grade unauthorized productions that were technically not fake just no official stock... same factories, same materials.
the game been dirty