Man Arrested Allegedly Trying To Steal Early Copy of Game At Convention

Atomic Games’ Xbox Live Arcade shooter Breach impressed one PAX East visitor so much he apparently attempted to steal the code, and he might have succeeded too, if not for one fatal mistake – telling the developers he was stealing it.

We don’t condone stealing here at Kotaku, but we do enjoy being helpful, so here’s a tip – don’t tell representatives of the company you are attempting to steal from that you are stealing from them. According to an Atomic Games’ representative speaking to Joystiq, that’s exactly what a suspected thief did this weekend on the PAX East show floor, while attempting to download Breach code onto his laptop.

“The suspect did admit to us several times, including as he was doing it, that he was stealing the code. 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,” David Tractenberg, a spokesperson for Atomic, explained.

Atomic Games president Peter Tamte told Joystiq that the suspect had downloaded about 14MB of data before he was caught, after which he ran into the crowd, eventually tracked down and taken into custody by the police.

Atomic Games is the developer behind the cancelled Six Days in Fallujah video game, a game based on real-life events during the conflict in Iraq. As such, they’ve worked very closely with military and intelligence organizations. With such delicate information and strong ties to military and intelligence agencies, it’s a good thing the suspect was picked up before the information hit the internet, as Tamte points out.

Joystiq tracked down the suspect on Xbox Live and spoke with him about the incident. According to him, he was merely trying to get online at the Hynes Convention Center using a free network cable at the Atomic booth. It bears noting that the Hynes Convention Center had free wireless running all weekend long. In fact, many of my posts over the weekend were transmitted using that wireless.

Atomic’s story is slightly different.

“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,” Tractenberg explained. “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.”

It gets even better.

During a panel called “Enforcement on Xbox Live: Tales from the Din Part 2,” the suspect asked Xbox Live director of policy and enforcement to unban his Gamertag, banned for playing Forza 3 early. Toulouse reminded the suspect that folks with early retail copies were not banned, only those with pirated versions.

The suspect admitted to Joystiq that he had downloaded the game illegally.

Following his arrest the suspect was detained for four hours and his laptops, modded Xbox 360, DS, PSP, and XMP3 were all confiscated. A small price to pay for being a completely incompetent criminal.

‘Breach’ game code theft at PAX East ends in arrest [Joystiq]