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4,000 copies of Age of Conan stolen in biggest, most pointless MMO heist ever

by Samuel Axon on Nov 5th 2008 5:30PM

Fantasy, Age of Conan, News Items, Humor

Thieves in the United Kingdom city of Bradford stole 4,000 retail copies of Age of Conan from the back of a truck late at night on Tuesday the 28th of October. The original source, Telegraph & Argus, claims that it was an Xbox 360 version of the game, but we're going to keep our sanity caps on and presume that was an error.

Police are trying to track down the thieves, but we're thinking it ought to be pretty easy to find them if they actually try to play the game themselves, seeing as how they'll need to register with a credit card number and other personal information to do so. We're guessing the thieves didn't realize that when they stole the boxes, eh? No good can come of this for anyone!

[Via CVG]

Having fun in Conan's homeland? Make sure to check out all of our previous Age of Conan coverage, and stick with Massively for more news from the Hyborian Age!

Source

Tags: age-of-conan, aoc, bradford, crime, criminals, funcom, humor, police, retail, stolen, stupid-criminals, theft, thieves, uk, united-kingdom

Reader Comments (15)

You realize that someone who stole 4000 copies of a game is going to try and re-sell them, not play them, right? The only people that would get caught by registering a stolen disk are the hapless bystanders that bought the stolen merchandise, most likely from a mail order retailer without even suspecting they were stolen. And that's assuming there's a record of the cd-keys for every box stolen, which seems unlikely.

Most likely this crime will never be solved, as the boxes simply melt into the marketplace with somebody other than the original owner making a profit.

Sorry, by 'mail order retailer' I meant something like those Ebay stores that exist as little more than warehouses with a virtual storefront. Retailer was a misnomer.

If the perpetrator is able to shift 4000 copies of AoC by whatever means, good luck to him, as he's doing a far better job that FunCom's marketing department. In fact, they should offer him a job.

haha nice

if they can sell them yes they should offer them a job

How is it pointless? As PeterD mentioned, they will probably sell them to eBay sellers, Amazon marketplace sellers, etc. If they sold each copy for only $5, they just made an easy $20k. Heck, even $4000 isn't bad if they sell them for a dollar apiece.

Lets not forget it might be that Conan game for the 360 thats out. And I am sure they will be selling it.

So THIS is where Massively gets all their swag for giveaways?!

Age of Conan is still in development for the 360 and isn't anywhere near finalisation, let alone pressing and shipping. I assume the game stolen was "Conan" not "Age of Conan". Didn't anyone think to check this story out before copy/pasting it from CVG?

stupit brits - they should have ask on gaming forums. I am sure there are plenty guys who want get rid of this box for free.

I bet FunCom is thinking, "Yes! Now we can deduct of the *full* market value of those boxes as a loss!"

This is the best joke of the week !

There is not a sane person in this MMO business who still buys Age of Conan. 750K boxes sold and 730K linger on all the attics or were even given to the trash collect.
It reminds me of Tabular rasa: at amazon.com they are selling TR NOW at 0.99 US dollar a piece.

Say who wants to have some nice collectable cardgame boxes of Star Wars and Star Trek. :)))))

Those thieves should have stolen CE editions of TBC instead. Going at 250 dollars a piece these days LOL

No good can come out of this?

What about the 4,000 people saved from paying £17 for the scam called AoC? They are just doing the locals a favor by keeping crap off their streets.

I say these thieves should be named the Robin Hoods of Bradford.

There is a follow on report about this theft story.

Apparently, after opening the boxes, the thieves realised what they had stolen, were extremely disappointed and have promptly returned it.

What they fail to mention is; after playing the game the perpetrator later returned 3,999 copies of the game to that same truck.

4,000 copies of Age of Conan stolen in biggest, most pointless MMO heist ever

Reader Comments (15)

Posted: Nov 5th 2008 6:08PM (Unverified) said

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