Reportedly a marine, the man was outraged that his preorder had been sold. An Aurora, Colorado man has been arrested and is being charged with disorderly conduct after an unusual encounter at his local Best Buy Comp., Inc. (BBY) store.
The 31-year-old Lomin Sar, reportedly a U.S. Marine, had arrived at the store on Tuesday hoping to purchase his copy of Activision Blizzard, Inc.'s (ATVI) hot shooter Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Mr. Sar had placed a preorder and was convinced his copy was waiting for him in the store.
But as it turned out, Best Buy had too many preorders and not enough actual copies, so it had sold all its existing stock to fans who attended the launch event. Mr. Sar was outraged at this development and the fact that he would miss out on the MW3 fun.
He began yelling at the Best Buy customer service representatives. He told them he would shoot them in the parking lot when they came out of the store. He also threatened to blow up the store itself.
The staff didn’t take kindly to the antics – understandable especially when Mr. Sar reportedly had received real world training in deadly violence from the U.S. government. The police were called and pulled over Mr. Sar in his black SUV as he was leaving the parking lot. Mr. Sar had reportedly had six prior traffic run-ins with the local police. This time Mr. Sar found himself a real life “prisoner of war” (or the U.S. criminal justice system, more precisely).
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 launched on Tuesday, selling 9.3 million copies – making it the biggest video game launch of all time. For non-fans, the game is an entrant in the first person shooter (fps) genre, whose follows various American characters in their international conflict with Russian ultranationalists, who are attempting to release World War 3.
The game is a direct sequel to Modern Warfare 2, which itself set a sales record of 4.7 million copies sold on launch day. The $310M USD in U.S. and UK launch revenue for CoD:MW2 surpassed any past entertainment release, including movies. It would go on to sell 22 million copies and surpass $1B USD in sales, making it the second best-selling video game of all time.
Modern Warfare 3 is expected to set the new bar on revenue for and sales. The eighth game in the Call of Duty franchise, the title pulls together the work of three different top video game studios. Leading the development was Infinity Ward, a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, Inc. (ATVI). Also contributing were Sledgehammer Games (makers of the the Dead Space franchise), an independent firm, and Raven Software, a subsidiary of Activision and oft contributor to id Software titles (they were the lead maker of Quake 4).
Despite the terrific launch, Mr. Sar’s bomb and death threats were not the only ugly incident to mar the launch. A shipment of 6,000 copies of the game, worth an estimated €400,000 ($551,480 USD) was stolen in a sophisticated robbery in Paris, which involved armed gunmen using tear gas.