Man Arrested For Stealing Unfinished Game At Trade Show

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There was a bit of non-virtual action at the PAX East gaming convention this past weekend. An unnamed fellow managed to steal roughly 14MB of source code for the upcoming game “Breach” from developer Atomic Games before attempting to escape into the crowd and being stopped by staff members from Atomic Games and then arrested.

According to David Tractenberg, spokesperson for Atomic Games, the alleged suspect walked into their booth where they had their new game Breach on display. The fellow helped himself to their network and admitted to the developers that “he just really liked the game and wanted to play it with his friends.” This is while he was plugged into their computers, and copying their source code. He was arrested by local police and had his computers taken, along with an Xbox 360, Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, all of which were modded to allow pirated content.

According to Peter Tamte, president of Atomic Games, speaking to gaming blog Joystiq, Atomic Games does work for government and military entities and so they take their security very seriously. According to Atomic, he had only managed to copy 14MB of data before he attempted to flee.

The perp even made an appearance on a Microsoft panel on Xbox Live security. During the session (which was rebroadcast by Microsoft as a podcast), the alleged suspect asked Microsoft’s Stephen Toulouse – director of policy and enforcement for Xbox Live – if he could have his gamertag unbanned. Then then admitted to Toulouse, and a room full of people, that his gamertag was banned for life because he had played a pirated early copy of Forza 3 on his console.

The alleged suspect even spoke to Joystiq (before his lawyer found out he was talking to the press and told him to stop) over Xbox Live. He told them that the WiFi at the convention center was down and he wanted to get online. He saw an open Ethernet wire in Atomic Games booth and plugged in with the intent of getting online. When he was confronted by Atomic Games staff, he says they accused him of stealing source code because he had certain software for pirating Xbox 360 content on his computer.

The suspect spent four hours in jail, but is now out. He’s under investigation for a felony under Massachusetts law. In unrelated news, the game “Prison Break” comes out today for the Xbox 360 – he might want to start studying up.

UPDATE: The man was set to appear Monday morning at his first arraignment hearing but evidently jumped bail and returned to his home in Delaware (from Boston, Massachusetts, where the PAX event was being held). He now has an arrest warrant out for him in the state of Massachusetts.