Mere days after Gears of War 2 began popping up on various torrent sites there has been an arrest made in the case.

Rodney Gray, 43, is a security guard employed by Technicolor, the Memphis Tennessee company that packages and distributes games and DVD’s in the U.S.

According to a Memphis Police Department affidavit, Gray stole hundreds of copies of Gears of War 2, as well as Fable II, and was selling them on the black market. He and another unidentified person of interest are currently under investigation for stealing and selling the games from the plant, but neither have been formally charged as of yet.

Detectives followed Gray from a Memphis apartment and pulled him over for driving related offenses. After doing so, they performed a cursory search of the vehicle and discovered 31 games in a red bag.

Memphis P.D. estimates the net worth of the theft to be more than $60,000.

Source: commercialappeal.com

Vault 101 just got plundered.

The eagerly anticipated Fallout 3 is nearly upon us, yet a full three weeks before its release rapacious pig-fuckers cracked the game and offered it via various torrent sites.

This is the third AAA title that has been hacked and cracked in as many months, leaving publishers frothing at the mouth as they consider even more draconian digital rights management.

To the casual observer this may seem like an overzealous response to retain the vast sea of greenbacks the industry seems to float upon. And that certainly is a concern, after all Electronic Arts is not motivated from a position of altruism. This is about control of their product, control of their intellectual property, and control of the consumer. Read more…

Today in WTF! news, Gears of War 2 is announced as having gone gold (which means the game has been finalized), and just a few hours after that, the game surfaces in the hand of a mysterious figure on the popular Neogaf gaming forum.

Coincidence? Bullshit? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that every time something like this happens the collective butt-cheeks of software executives clench in unison.

Eventually, games will come with remote detonators that sense a premature case ejection. Removing a game from its container before the specified release date will cause it to explode violently, and affected individual will have a hard time convincing anyone that they didn’t deserve every piece of gaming shrapnel they end up having to dislodge from their face.

Hey, I love reporting news and rumors as much as the next guy, but if continuously pushed, it’s not far fetched to think that developers will find better ways to protect themselves and the media they create at the expense of time and resources that could have been spent developing better content. Everything comes with a price.

Eat lead, you dirty pirates!

Fallout 3, one of the most highly anticipated titles for Xbox 360 and PS3, is already available for illegal download. It seems that PC games are not the only ones to fall prey to the digital cutlasses of piracy.

With only three weeks until the game’s official release (Oct. 28), the leak will only serve as bragging rights to asshole gamers who simply need to play the game before anyone else does. The pirated version of the game is brought to you by the same people that ruined Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Read more…

Alright, the Devil may not be crying, but Capcom sure is. Capcom, which has produced the emo-kid wunderkind Devil May Cry series, is currently trying to repel all brigands and cutthroats as their most recent installment in the series is getting pirated.

Christian Svensson, Capcom’s senior director of strategic planning and research posted on the industry giant’s forum lamenting Devil May Cry 4’s abysmal PC sales.

“It’s such a good version and it really deserves better sales,” Svensson wrote. “I know it’s getting pirated to hell and back - it was up on torrents literally the day it shipped.”

Despite rampant pirating of the title, Svensson is adamant to continue digital distribution of future titles, including the forthcoming Bionic Commando.

“I certainly have pushed for digital distribution on (Devil May Cry 4) – globally, I’m responsible for all DD deals,” Svensson wrote. “I have a presentation I’m making shortly that I’m hoping will make that approach something we do with all our PC content, even those developed in Japan, but no promises. It might not happen.”

Source: Capcom.com

After the disappointing sales of PC-exclusive FPS Crysis, Crytek president Cevat Yerli has said that his company will no longer make titles exclusive to the PC platform. The main reason? Piracy. Read more…

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been noticing quite a few themes that have been making their way through the industry. Throughout last week at GDC, many of these took center stage in a variety of forms. Today, we examine the state of PC Gaming.

Every year a multitude of publications come out proclaiming “PC gaming is dead! All units bail out!” It’s all getting to be a little ridiculous. Read more…

Who can forget that classic title, “Pow”?

The claim that 90% of DS software in America is pirated may well have been a load of bunk, but there’s no doubt that piracy is a major problem for publishers and developers. So what to do? Well, it seems like they had the answer pretty much sorted out in 1989. Read more…

The Caribbean state of Antigua and Barbuda now has permission to effectively ignore U.S. copyright covering items such as films, television music and games after a legal battle lasting nearly five years. Read more…