When gamers really want to break street date on a new and upcoming game that’s when the hackers start to come out, however with Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo cracking down on anti-piracy measures, some crackpots have turned to traditional crime instead.

The gigantic list of crazy GameSpot related crimes continues to grow, as two men armed with semi-automatic firearms recently held up a GameSpot in Bel Air, Maryland, only 30 miles north of Baltimore. The heist happened late Saturday night, during the store’s closing time. When no other customers were around, the group broke into the store and threatened the employees at gun point. Unfortunately, two customers stopped by the store shortly before closing, and seeing them as a threat, the robbers forced them into a storage area. Neither the employees nor the customers were hurt, and the robbery went down without a shot being fired.

Still, the most peculiar, yet somehow still understandable detail is that these robbers weren’t primarily after cash. Instead, they took from the GameStop’s back room, four cases of Call of Duty: Black Ops, a game that isn’t scheduled to go on sale until tomorrow. That’s over one hundred copies of the as of yet unreleased game. In addition, they also stole some game systems and peripherals.

The county sheriff’s office has released a bulletin asking anyone who manages to purchase this game before it’s noted release date to contact them immediately. Police and citizens are currently searching the internet for anyone advertising a prerelease copy of the game on websites such as Craigslist or Ebay. As of now, no one has come forth with any leads.

Though the robbers have not been identified, the police have reason to suspect that they are the same robbers who held up an Aberdeen GameStop location on October 21. Though no one got a good look at their face, the suspects were seen fleeing the scene of the crime in a late model white minivan. A late model white minivan was also seen fleeing from the scene of the crime during the Aberdeen and the descriptions of both minivans match each other. That makes some sense actually. It was slightly strange that GameStop-related crimes were consistently coming up in the news recently, but now it appears that some of them are related to each other.

Unfortunately, this means that the Bel Air GameStop will not have enough supplies of Call of Duty: Black Ops to fulfill their pre-orders. Most likely, these game copies won’t be traceable if they are not sold before launch date, so the chances of tracking them down are slim to none. Free money for the robbers, long wait time for the GameStop customers, it’s a sad world.

The Baltimore Sun attempted to reach the GameStop employees for comment, but they were only referred to a corporate office which declined to speak about the recent event. The local GameStop employees have also declined to comment as to the status of customers’ Call of Duty: Black Ops pre-orders.

At least no one is blaming the games this time around.

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