As if we needed reminding of how big a commercial event the release of a new Call of Duty game is, word comes from France that a truck full of copies of the game has been hijacked by professional thieves.
On Saturday, the truck, driving through Créteil in southern Paris, was rammed by another vehicle. After the dust had settled, two men emerged from the car and used tear gas to subdue the truck’s driver, making off with an estimated 6000 copies of the year’s biggest game, valued at around €400,000.
Edward D
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 2:09 PMHoly awesome. No shipment of Skyrim is safe…
Korolev
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 2:10 PMWow. They’re gonna have to start delivering these games in armoured trucks aren’t they?
Matthew K
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 2:17 PMSo, would it be lame to make a joke here about Fox News already writing the article that says this just shows games promote criminal activity?
Sam
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 2:22 PMCant help but wonder if this is due to price that copy sold for on ebay. It’d make this a fairly simple but worthwhile heist.
thxultra
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 3:03 PMExcept that only an idiot pays “$1700″ for a game 4 days before release date…
Sam
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 3:49 PMYou’re implying the world isn’t full of idiots? : /
Chris M
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 4:01 PMI’d like to see verification of the sale in some form, otherwise I purely believe whoever it was who “bought it” was simply trolling the dumb prick selling it.
thyco1
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 2:24 PMi cant help but start think that these are giant publicity stunts to get people excited for the same shit they played last year
Akra
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 3:00 PMYeah I’m thinking the same
thxultra
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 3:00 PMYeah, exactly what Ive been thinkin! All these “random” and “amazing” things happening right near the releas date of MW3!
Senor Freebie
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 3:14 PMWhat like Battlefield 3 getting released? I haven’t been paying attention really.
Jupiter
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 2:25 PMWould have thought it would be hard to off-load 6000 stolen copies of the same game.
f4ction
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 2:33 PMWalk in to EB
“I’d like to trade in these 6000 games please!”
“Store credit only!”
sadface
Sam
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 3:03 PMWell done sir. I LOL’d
Vergas
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 2:45 PMCouldn’t they have stolen a decent game?
JonBOY
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 2:55 PMMad bastards! I can see the eBay listing now.
MW3, brand new.
Buy-it-now: 20 euro
Number available: 6000
Seller feedback: 0
modraeF
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 2:59 PM‘year’s biggest game’ ROFL
Alex
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 4:17 PMNot much to laugh about, MW3 will undoubtedly be the year’s biggest game by sales revenue, and will likely smash the Black Ops retail record. Given the pricing, it could well be the first game to break $3 billion total revenue.
Johnny Sweetbread
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 11:20 AMLOL! $3 billion? I don’t think the market is that big. Let’s do the maths.
Average price $70USD (around the world), let’s be very generous and assume they will sell 20 million copies over the lifetime of the game. So… 20 * 70 = $1.4 billion? Add in some extra cash for people buying overpriced games and those stupid limited editions that come with a whole bag of crap. So $2billion max, maybe, if they are VERY VERY lucky. $3 billion? Dream on, the market isn’t there… they are already pushing it. It’s still impressive though.
monkeyd_93
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 3:13 PMThe fact it happened in Paris, and done in a cool and calculated way, just days before release screams stunt to me. How could criminals porssibly offload 6000 copies of the game without ringing alarm bells?
Who knows, maybe we might even see the biggest bonfire of games ever seen soon.
os42
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 3:57 PMMy thoughts too, but would IW really go so far as to ram a truck with a car? I don’t see how IW could justify jeopardising the safety of other motorists just to generate more media coverage.
du5t
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 4:32 PMYeah but I wouldn’t put it past Activision :P
WintersWolf
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 3:05 AMA lot of people don’t realize this, but outside of the main district around the eiffel tower etc, Paris is a crime filled ghetto. You have trouble walking down the street without being threatened, there are gangs everywhere, gypsys target travellers and crime is through the roof.
Not a surprise.
Repneiras
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 3:24 PMTbh this would make a pretty good Payday: The Heist mission. Or maybe the thieves stole the idea for this raid from the Slaughterhouse mission.
Sam
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 3:25 PMJoke’s on the thieves, Call of Duty 8 Modern Warfare 2.1 Electric Boogaloo is shit!
Barry
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 3:32 PMWHY?
incontrovertible
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 3:35 PMHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Chris M
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 4:06 PMThing is, if Activision actually track their stock properly, they should know what units were on that truck, and therefore the CD/License keys for each and every copy, they should then be able to simply revoke the legitimacy of those licenses from their license activation servers. Problem hijacker fags?
Hermes and Thoth
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 4:26 PMI despise the use of the word ‘fags’ and don’t see how it made your comment any funnier.
Your point stands, your delivery was misdirected.
Gronk
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 4:06 PMHahaha the joke’s on them!
Hermes and Thoth
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 4:30 PMMasked Bandits and the fact that this was in France make it seem like the criminals were on horseback and the shipment was being delivered by horse and cart to the palace of Versailles. Masked Bandits ejected from their saddles armed with their finely sharpened swords and held them to the drivers throat. Then the next twenty minutes was them unloading copies of the game into rucksacks before riding off into the sunset with their swords waving in the air.
Aliasalpha
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 12:47 AMHmm, whats the bet there’ll be some kind of DLC where you have to stop hijackers
Doraiya
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 5:45 AMWell, the game is pretty much digital crack, so this doesn’t surprise me at all.
Steven Bogos
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 9:17 AMI first read the title and was like ‘Oh here we go with another sensationalized piracy thread’ then I did a double take and was like ‘what?’
Ryy
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 4:54 PMYay! maybe some kids will go outside and play instead of playing another crappy game of CoD
Ryy
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 4:56 PMCoD killing children’s future since 29 October 2003!
Tomas
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 4:58 AMThat’s why i got Mw3 for 20 euros.. I live near Créteil in France.