Ridiculous Fishing developer, Vlambeer, hit by thieves at E3

Written by David Hing

June 17, 2013 | 09:25

Tags: #hardware #theft

Companies: #e3 #indie #vlambeer

Indie studio Vlambeer had a bag of development hardware stolen during E3 last week.

The Dutch studio, behind games including arcade-style Super Crate Box, the trippy and menacing Yeti Hunter and iOS fishing title Ridiculous Fishing, lost a bag containing a PS Vita dev kit, a PS Vita, a laptop, two iPads and a Kindle Fire.

Speaking to Polygon, Vlambeer co-founder Rami Ismail confirmed that the studio did have backups of everything that was on the hardware stolen. 'It kind of feels like Vlambeer got stolen,' Ismail added. 'It's just a giant pain.'

The theft happened at a social event at a hotel pool bar on Thursday morning and not at the convention centre itself.

Polygon also suffered at the hands of a thief, losing a backpack full of camera equipment. According to the authorities, a lot of thefts were reported around the convention and they expected it to be likely that people at the convention were being targeted.

E3 organisers the ESA responded by issuing a warning to the press and making efforts to tighten their security. They also released a statement declaring that occurrences of theft were minimal this year.

There is precedent for small scale heists taking place at E3. Back in 2004, a copy of the at the time unreleased Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater demo code was swiped from the convention floor.

PAX also earned the attention of thieves in 2010 with Atomic Games' Breach being the target of an attack. The thief managed to download some of the game's code before being spotted by a member of the studio and caught after a short chase through the crowd.
Discuss this in the forums
YouTube logo
MSI MPG Velox 100R Chassis Review

October 14 2021 | 15:04

TOP STORIES

SUGGESTED FOR YOU