Muppet at PAX East tries to steal pre-release code, gets arrested

Over the weekend someone (Justin D. May, 20, of Wilmington, Delaware) wandered over to Atomic Games' stand at PAX East and tried to copy the game they were showing off (Breach).

When someone spotted him he pegged it into the crowd, but was later caught and arrested, after admitting downloading it and having a good chunk of code on his laptop.

He was caught, obviously, and the police confiscated his laptop (which had Xbox Neigborhood installed), a modded Xbox 360 and modded DS. Prior to this, he told a guy at Atomic that he 'knew people' and 'could give us bigger and more important people', although no-one specific.

He was also seen asking Stepto about how to unban his gamertag after being caught playing a pre-release copy of Forza 3, so it's obvious this guy is in the 'lol, steal this and post it online' crowd rather than the 'want to find out about the development of this game and missing content'. It is believed that he was fully intending to leak it.

He has since skipped bail.

Details here: http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/30/breach-game-code-theft-at-pax-east-ends-in-arrest/
and here: http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/30/breach-thief-jumps-bail-currently-playing-modern-warfare-2 (with picture)

 

People like him need to be taken out back and ****ing beaten with a bat.

Sorry but i'm tired of trash like them.
=|

 

he, i'm not an insider on any gaming company so i found this stories funny

 

I know trash like this brags about modding his XBOX and has 10000s of ISOs on an external HD.

At least I emulate games no longer for sale....and Nintendo stuff (I have no moral objection to taking money out of Nintendo's pockets)

 

Wonder if it's an online handle anyone knows.

+10 to brass balls.

-10000 to intelligence.

-hl178

 

The real question is: Why !? Why someone would bother to go to a convention and try to steal a game code?

Well done!

 

If someone hadn't stolen SF2 for the SNES it would have stayed the stuff of myths. I m not supporting theft mind you but sometimes luck just has it that stolen property provides some closure to cancelled projects.

 

I kinda agree with you. But even on that case, the proto cart / rom / whatever was stolen / "released" by someone from inside.


This guy went to PAX, with his laptop and on the show floor (probably near Atomic Games booth) and started "downloading" the game and thought nobody would notice him.

And the game will only cost 15 bucks. Getting arrested because he didn't want to wait it's release and pay 15 dollars is just plain stupidity.

 

Ok. I'm blanking. SF2 for SNES to me means Street Fighter 2.

I know that's not right.

WTF are you guys talking about.

-hl718

 

Star Fox 2

 

Slightly off topic (but from the same article posted above)

"Many of the hackers who stole Valve's Half-Life 2 code were tracked down by the FBI's Cybercrime Task Force."

Wouldn't you think something as high-tech as the 'FBI Cybercrime Task Force' would be more concerned with people who are hacking into, say... the pentagon? or military installations?!

No... they dedicated their time to tracking down and arresting hackers out to steal a pc game.

The world has gone nuts. - well... it went nuts years ago but this kind of puts a seal on it.

Back on topic - An idiot? Yes, no doubt, but he only got caught with 14mb of data, it's not like he had the keys to the kingdom.

"The suspect did admit to us several times, including as he was doing it, that he was stealing the code."

And they didn't just stop him there and then? He didn't just tell them once, he told them several times?!

Of course, how he cracked their security is also puzzling when the Atomic Games rep goes on to say...

"Because of the work we do for military and intelligence organizations, we take security issues like this very seriously"

I hope they only make moulds and don't actually code any software.

 

http://kotaku.com/5505341/suspected-game-code-thief-on-the-lam

OMG, this punk is sooooo stupid

Edit: But I have to admit it, this kid has balls

 

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Simon Wai prototype as well.
http://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_2_(Simon_Wai_prototype)

 

FBI's Cybercrime deals with a lot of things. Juts because they don't make news reports about it every day doesn't mean they aren't doing things.

Hell a quick hit of wikipedia nets you this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_Buffalo_Field_Office
"Buffalo Cyber Crime Taskforce - Deals with cybercrime, including cyber-terrorism, crimes against children, distribution of child pornography,[8][9][10] [11]malicious hacking, Internet fraud, theft of trade secrets, copyright infringement (piracy), denial-of-service attacks, and malicious computer programs (viruses, Trojans, worms).[12] Additionally, the task force is charged with supporting investigations of traditional crimes using technical means.[12][7]"

Also I know your post came before it was posted but I recommend reading the kotaku article (ewww, and i even hate kotaku). The Joystiq article is just all over the place (and shouldn't be taken as literal as you did).

 

He had a modded DS? Who mods their ds? Why not just use a flash card.

If he admitted it as he was doing it, why didn't they just unplug the Ethernet cable or whatever?

While how he did this is kind of stupid, I myself like to play/check out beta versions of games so I can't condemn it completely. Also, even if he were to steal it 100% and leaked it online, I doubt it would lose the company 6 million dollars. The only people who would have downloaded it are the same people who WILL download it when it's finished and released anyway.

 

i was expecting someone to be cosplaying as kermit or ms. piggy.... i'm kinda disappointed right now.

 

So his name is now in the public record.

Anyone know the kid? I've never heard of him.

-hl718