In the darkness of a Federal Express warehouse, a crime affecting LA area gamers is alleged to have occurred. “I awoke to a call from my district manager saying all my Gears of War 2 copies had been stolen,” said Stephanie Armstrong, Game Crazy Store Director in Lakewood, California. Investigation is pending with Federal Express and law enforcement but it appears likely that a warehouse worker has absconded with the property. “We wondered why we didn’t get the shipment yesterday, but some companies will only ship overnight for delivery on release day.” She says this is sometimes done to maintain street date.
An anonymous source has indicated that he purchased a copy of Gears2 at a 7-Eleven convenience store. “They didn’t scan my game, they just scanned a generic bar code they had on a piece of paper and took my money.” The bar code is a unique product identifier that would electronically reflect the date and time that particular product was being sold, “by using a generic code it would be possible to circumvent the street date and the store can just scan them all out after midnight,” said the buyer.
Juan Rodriguez, District Manger for the LA Market, Game Crazy intends to pick up an emergency shipment at the airport this evening to make copies available for customers at the midnight launch. No word on the Collectors Edition copies yet but Game Crazy will do their best to make things right for their customers despite the malicious acts of a third party criminal.
Sara Culver, ButtonMasher79 and LA Special Event Reporter for WinBreak.com.