French Thieves Steal Thousands of Copies of New Game
Anticipation Builds Around New Call of Duty Title
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 launches today, but already there's lots of activity surrounding the game -- some of it illegal. A series of heists over the weekend resulted in thousands of copies of the game being stolen. The total value of those heists is said to be well over a million dollars.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 remains one of the most popular games ever released. Its partial successor, Call of Duty: Black Ops (released just last year) kept the buzz surrounding the Call of Duty name going, but Modern Warfare 3 is seen as the true successor to MW2. The previous Call of Duty games featured Hollywood-inspired single player campaigns and addictive online multiplayer, and it's predicted that Modern Warfare 3 will continue in that vein.
No wonder, then, that it's proving hard for some gamers to wait until Modern Warfare 3 makes its way, legally, to store shelves.
On the weekend armed robbers successfully hijacked a pair of Parisian trucks carrying thousands of copies of the new game. In the first heist, robbers used a car to block the roadway, forcing the truck off the road. The truck's drivers were doused with tear gas, disabling them and allowing the thieves to make off with the whole truck and its 6,000 copies of Modern Warfare 3.
A second truck was attacked the same day in the same city by three additional thieves who threatened the truck's drivers with weapons before making off with the vehicle.
It's impossible to know what plans the thieves have for the stolen games. However, it is clear that demand for early copies of Modern Warfare 3 is extremely high. Recently, someone paid $1,700 for a pre-release version of the Activision shooter.
With the game arriving today, the next question will surely be: were the heists worth it, for the robbers or for the gamers dying to get their hands on an early copy of this highly-anticipated title?
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is available for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii and PC.
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