While Atomic was showing Breach at PAX East over the weekend, an attendee at the booth attempted to steal the game’s code.
After stealing about 14Mb of the game’s code, he ran off upon discovery, and was luckily apprehended a bit later.
According to Joystiq, this is not the first time the fellow has gotten in trouble over a stolen code, only this time, he is facing federal charges instead of just getting his Xbox Live Gamertag banned.
“The suspect did admit to us several times, including as he was doing it, that he was stealing the code,” said Atomic spokesperson David Tractenberg. “He said to myself and several other team members, after being caught, that it was not a big deal, he just really liked the game and wanted to play it with his friends.
“While it’s a very unfortunate incident, it was a form of a compliment that he liked our game so much he risked a felony to play it early…We had no choice but to have him arrested and protect our IP.
“[Once caught] he said several times he ‘knew people’ and ‘could give us bigger and more important people’ and he could ‘name names.’ However, I have no idea if these people were on the show floor or just hackers at home.
“I would hate to think he got someone’s full code and their title is going to be compromised due to this guy. I just need to make it clear he didn’t say anything specific.”
“This guy had only succeeded in copying about 14Mb to his laptop before our staff caught him,” added president Peter Tamte. “Because of the work we do for military and intelligence organizations, we take security issues like this very seriously.
“It is fortunate for him that we caught him before any of this ended up on the internet. Many of the hackers who stole Valve’s Half-Life 2 code were tracked down by the FBI’s Cybercrime Task Force.”
Joystiq contacted the alleged thief through Xbox Live, and he claimed he wasn’t stealing the code, just trying to get online in the Hynes Convention Center.
“I got online using the ethernet cable hanging outside their booth, because WiFi wasn’t working,” he said. “They stopped me, checked my computer, and saw the Xbox Neighborhood application. Because that was on there, they accused me of stealing Breach, even though it’s not on my computer.”
Stephen Toulouse, director of policy and enforcement for Xbox Live, himself had a bit of a run-in with the fellow during his “Enforcement on Xbox Live: Tales from the Din Part 2” panel at PAX.
During the Q&A at the end of the panel, the fella asked if he could have his Gamertag unbanned. When Toulouse asked what he’d done, he said that he’d played Forza 3 before release.
Toulouse explained to him that it’s okay to play a game with a broken street date, but a pirated version will get you banned.
The suspect later admitted to Joystiq that his version of Forza 3 was downloaded early.
In the end, the alleged thif spent four hours in jail, and his laptops, modded Xbox 360, modded PSP, modded DS and XMP3 were obtained by the police.
Takes all kinds, ya know.
Breach is scheduled for release this summer on XBL and will run you $15. It is expected to be released for PC six-weeks later.
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