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Two men got jobs at Amazon just to steal copies of Zelda
- jasmer 3y agoThere's something to be admired about people who put a lot of effort into planning and doing something, even if it is a bit petty.
- bena 3y agoTrue, but this is not that.
- PurpleRamen 3y agoI'm not sure whether there was much planning involved here. I mean they hadn't even a good escape-route. They just stopped coming to work, instead of terminating the contract, or call ill.
- tiffanyg 3y ago> a good escape-route This, especially. You'd think, as a video gamer in an Amazon warehouse, the choices would be ~endless... https://youtu.be/Ecbjqk5COY0 https://youtu.be/Ecbjqk5COY0
- Simulacra 3y agoBut to work at an Amazon warehouse ???
- thesuperbigfrog 3y agoAre there similar types of fraud occurring at Amazon warehouses / fulfillment centers? https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-manager-faces-20-years-jail-for-273k-fraud-2022-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-manager-fac...
- Covzire 3y agoIf they don't have strong security and a lot of cameras watching their stocks of trading cards they do. Those things are basically like cash to the right criminal. I know MTG has seen quite a few scams where people buy boxes brand new only to discover someone has removed all the good cards and almost perfectly sealed it back up. Often it's a rogue supply chain or retail employee involved.
- coffeedan 3y agoTo leave the FC each associate has to walk through a metal detector and empty their pockets. No bags are allowed in. These guys must have stuffed the games down their pants or something. Also, there are cameras everywhere. Mostly to figure out what happened after the fact - not constantly monitoring.
- pbhjpbhj 3y agoNintendo Switch games are very small memory cards, maybe 1.5cm among the longest edge and 2.5mm thick?? I imagine you could easily stick it to the back of a belt buckle or under an insole (in shoes there's is sometimes a metal stiffener between the heel and midsole) or secrete it on your person ("prison pocket"!) without it setting off a metal detector.
- bakugo 3y agoUnless he grabbed the game more than 12 days before the release date, it was all a waste of time because the game was already leaked online by then...
- edgyquant 3y agoMaybe they were the leakers?
- PurpleRamen 3y agoWhich assumes he has the ability and necessary tools to acquire and play the leak.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoI have a modded switch, and it is a giant pain in the ass. It’s in my opinion atypical from any other console hacking scene, it’s difficult and very poorly explained. However, the emulator is about as difficult as double clicking.
- bakugo 3y agoHow is it a pain in the ass? There are tons of simple guides online that explain anything you'd need to know.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoQuick, without going through four guides written by 14 year olds, tell me how you would convert a pre-patched module with AutoRCM and SX Pro dongle to Hekate and Atmophere. Heaven help you if you haven’t looked at things in two years, good luck even getting it to boot correctly. I’ve been modding consoles since mods existed. This has been the worst of any experience. Some combination of highly skilled by possibly autistic programmers and a clientele of teenagers that recommend things like “FORMAT IT IN FAT32” is a solution to why an update isn’t showing up. I don’t know why it’s bad, it just is.
- sempron64 3y agoI remember when I was a kid and someone's mom worked at a book store when Harry Potter came out...
- noahlt 3y agoI wonder whether they would have been caught if they had actually quit, rather than simply stopped showing up.
- ineedasername 3y agoYeah especially for the superfan who just wanted to break the release date embargo to play the game. He got the game so that's it, mission accomplished. But he had no escape plan. And it's Amazon, he could probably have gotten himself fired by taking 4 or 5 bathroom breaks in a single shift.
- mywittyname 3y ago"What do y'all think about this union idea?"
- ipaddr 3y agoHard to unionize when the average employment length is 30 days
- whinenot 3y agoOh, come on! They aren't that quick to fire. Of course you first get a Performance Improvement Plan that specifies you are not allowed to use the toilet outside of your manager assigned breaks for the next 365 days and are given a handy plastic bottle to help with compliance. They can't possibly be THAT cruel. /s Also they're hiring at the nearby warehouse if anyone's interested!
- jrmg 3y agoCan you ‘just quit’ in Japan? Many places require a notice period.
- worble 3y agoI've never known a company pursue legal action for not honoring a notice period - it's going to cost them far more than it's worth to pursue it legally than to just stop paying you for not turning up.
- inasio 3y agoReminds me of the South Park episode where Cartman cannot wait any longer for the (Nintendo Wii?) to be released, goes and freezes himself in a glacier. Nowadays he could just get a job at an Amazon warehouse, win win
- ineedasername 3y agoThe two men didn't work together, and had very different motives: Man 1) Super fan. Stole the game (1 copy) before release, stopped showing up to work and instead played Zelda all day. Man 2) Pure theft & resale motive, including other zelda merch I mean, I can kind of appreciate what the first guy did, with the exception of stealing a copy. A college-age kid, superfan, the game exists-- it's done-- there's just this arbitrary release date so he finds a loophole/backdoor into getting access to a copy. It's just, you know, at 21 I hope he's dedicating at least a fraction of that energy into his future/career/education whatever.
- harles 3y ago> he finds a loophole/backdoor into getting access to a copy. I wouldn’t call stealing, even a high effort one, a loophole any more than I’d call shoplifting a life hack.
- throwway120385 3y agoThe court system traditionally does care what your motivation is for doing something. See the difference between manslaughter and murder, which is entirely based on your intent at the time.
- pb7 3y agoYeah, to reduce the severity of the intent by default. Plotting a scheme to steal when it has more value is not that. Or in your own terms, the difference between 3rd degree and 1st degree murder.
- conductr 3y agoThis was entirely premeditated theft. He had to apply to the job, interview, etc. Even still, I believe a slap on the wrist is appropriate punishment as it's just not that serious of a crime.
- ineedasername 3y agoLots of thefts, hacks, etc involve exploiting loopholes in a system. It doesn't have to be either/or, it can be exploiting a loophole, and also theft, which this was.
- bluetidepro 3y agoThis reminds me of some people who have been getting jobs recently as security for huge arena's in the USA just to see Taylor Swift live because the ticket prices were outrageous. haha [1] https://www.insider.com/taylor-swift-eras-tour-nashville-resident-viral-security-guard-2023-5 https://www.insider.com/taylor-swift-eras-tour-nashville-res... [2] https://fun107.com/a-new-bedford-woman-went-as-far-as-landing-a-job-as-a-security-officer-just-to-see-taylor-swift/ https://fun107.com/a-new-bedford-woman-went-as-far-as-landin...
- lettergram 3y agoI have a friend who is a cop, off duty he will do security for concerts. He said it was well worth it, because he (a) never had to pay for concerts and (b) would let other friends in for free (which I assume he'd get kick backs for from their roles in life).
- joebob42 3y agoWhich is to say he's doing kind of shit security, no? I'd have guessed one of the points of security is to keep people who didn't pay, out.
- 0xffff2 3y agoHonest question. How do you stay friends with someone like that? Your friend holds a position of public trust, but he's openly corrupt at his side job. What are the odds that he's completely ethical and upstanding when he's on the public's time?
- causi 3y agoI understood this level of fanboyism when I was twelve and looked forward to only one or two games a year. I don't understand how you can care that much about games in 2023 without also having a backlog big enough to occupy you until future releases.
- mynegation 3y agoComments are focusing on legal aspects, but I believe not enough attention is paid to gaming addiction as a mental health issue. Many decades ago I had some friends dropping out of college because of it, and myself, I quit cold turkey more than quarter of century ago when I realized how much gaming negatively affected my well-being.
- conductr 3y agoI cold turkey quit gaming shortly after first xbox came out. All my college buddies/roommates were skipping classes and playing nonstop. I was excited about it and played a bit but quickly realized I just didn't have time to do that and focus on other life goals (don't remember details but probably after getting a bad test grade or missing something important); like finishing college at the time. Since then, a lot of them haven't really made progress "in life". I'm sure they're happy and all, I don't know really, but I know I wouldn't have been happy doing what they've done. (Eg. playing a ton of games while maintaining bare level of income/sustenance in order to devote majority of life on gaming)
- ipaddr 3y agoArtists, musicians, gamer, hopeful pro athletes and parents all make sacrifices in the rat race. The game of life is what all of us have been feed.. seems to work for some.. maybe there are other paths for others. Who I am I to judge?
- karaterobot 3y agoIn the long run, the person who got a job at Amazon, stole a copy of Zelda, and spent all his time playing it will have about the same experience as someone who waited until release day, or even much later. Years from now, the extra few days he got to play won't matter at all. In fact, that's probably already the case now that you can just buy the game and finish it whenever you want. I've never gotten hyped for a product launch, followed the news religiously, waited in line to buy it, and later in cold blood concluded all of that was attention well spent. I can think of plenty of times when it wasn't: why did I wait in line for a Wii not once, but three times? Why did I take off work to play Cyberpunk 2077? I wonder how much of fan hype is genuine excitement for something you love, and how much of it is just falling for the marketing. I'm not saying not to love the things you love.
- ccooffee 3y ago> Years from now, the extra few days he got to play won't matter at all. While I agree in general with the sentiment that time is fungible, I think the story about getting a job to steal a video game might make the whole experience more memorable. "I found a video game on the street and got to play it early" is one thing, but "I got a job so I could steal a pre-release copy of the game" reflects a lot about the character of the person. The early days playing the game won't matter, but the days spent PRIOR to playing the game will be a treasured memory.
- pb7 3y ago>reflects a lot about the character of the person That his values are really messed up and they're probably not trustworthy, right?
- ccooffee 3y agoIf your goal is to acquire an unreleased video game, they may be a very trustworthy person. But probably not the type of trustworthy you want to manage a store. The "steal from your employer" angle isn't so great, but "working around the system to accomplish your goals" is an ethos widely lauded here on HN. If the person had placed a pre-order through Amazon and found a way to mark their order as "delivered" when walking out the door with it, I'd have no problem with it.
- TheCaptain4815 3y agoIronic cause the game leaked 12 days early on emulators
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rjbwork 3y agoThis reminds me of the guys in the warez/music scenes back in the day. One well documented example was Dell Glover. Interesting reads. Kind of a halfway point between the motives in the story. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Dell+Glover https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Dell+Glover
- ipaddr 3y agoThis is what happens when you have no loyalty to staff. If they had treated workers like humans people would stay and long term employees are less likely to steal because they count on their job. The average length of employment is a month.. no surprise
- pbhjpbhj 3y agoI don't understand, TOTK hasn't come out yet, it's not out until 20 June .. which coincidentally is the day after my eldest finishes his exams!!
- floundy 3y ago[flagged]
- aigoochamna 3y agoAs for man #1, that's some dedication. Let the man play.
- pokerface_86 3y agomy only question is why… the game leaked over a week prior to launch