As the growth of gaming as a sport grows of course there will be bumps along the road. In the column I hope to explore one of the dangers of attending lans, causing thousands of pounds worth of damage in cash aswell and sentimental damage.

Theifing is becoming rife in the gaming scene with reports almost weekly of expensive technilogical items being stolen from Lans , or in some cases, players being robbed of their wallets.

With the CPC coming up over the weekend here is three incidents of theft involved with gaming:

Case Study 1: Gaming junky accuses Mibr of theft

On the 28th of March 2007 GamingJunky.com published a shocking article that explored the possibility of top Counter Strike 1.6 Team Made in Brazil being the culprits of theft at the Home of Chrome.Although the article provided no solid proof of the accused being the culprits, but itdid bring up some very intriguing points. The story goes like this:

On the day of September 16th 2006 Mibr ( Lineup consisting of ; Renato "nak" Nakano, Raphael "cogu" Camargo, Bruno "bruno" Ono, Rafael "Pava" Pavanelli, and Carlos "kiko" Henrique ) were in Sweden paying a visit to the infamous ( now closed ) home to the girlz Of destruction - Alana "Ms. X" Reid, Jamie "Missy" Pereyda, Livia "Liefje" Teernstra, and Therese "Trito" Andersson. The visit was the celebrate the birthday of talented gamer Liefje. Many few outsiders were invited to the party, this included Mibr. Almost everyone who attended appeared to have enjoyed themselves and all stayed longer than 40 minutes. All that is, apart from the accused, Made in Brazil.

Missy said;

Quote “When MiBr came to the house, they all kept to themselves, and they weren't very friendly to me; they didn't even introduce themselves. I can remember them standing next to the stairs together just talking to each other and laughing".


During the party it is claimed that some of the Mibr stars were seen entering the room of Ms. Alana Reid. Others claim they saw two members standing outside Ms. Reid's room while the third was inside. Almost like guardsmen. There was a known rule at the Home of Chrome , which was, you must not enter the girls rooms without their permission.

the next morning the following were missing: Alana's laptop, $500 mp3 player, $500 cell phone, $300 US cash, Therese's camera, Johnathan's new day old Lacoste shoes, and some towels. Yes, towels.

Many theories about how to steal from the house were drawn up, but none seemed to make any sense apart from one. To drop the items out of the handily place balcony in Alana's room. This is where the towels come in. Maybe they put the breakable items in a towel and lower it to their teammates? This is definitely a possibility. It became even more probable when they actually found the towels on the front lawn the next morning.

Source: Gamingjunky.com

I'm by no means condemning Mibr as a clan, I m just using this situation that Mibr seem to have got caught up in as an example.

Case Study 2:Digilb Drama

Digilab took place a week after the SHG Open in the Artic land of Norway. With an impressive prizepurse of 90 000 NOK on offer in years gone bye. Here occured another act of the dispicable nature that only is theifing, but this time it took a turn for the worse.
An eye witness account:

QuoteAt Thursday, 4 players got their shuttle's stolen. They tried to find out who stole it all by themselves, and then it became a big scene. The players claimed there were some foreign boys who stole the shuttle's, and some of the guards kicked these boys out of the LAN, but the boys threatened them with coming back with many friends and beat up the guards.

Guess what, tonight they came. At 23:00 CET, people couldn't go to the laundry room, as the police and guards saying it was for security-reasons. People started asking questions and the guards said there were almost 100 boys standing outside, trying to get in the hall, and carrying small guns and knives. They tried to get in by pushing the doors and breaking windows, while the security staff inside put up barrels in order to stop them from getting in. Luckily, the police came in time to prevent them from coming inside the hall.

Just earlier tonight, the Norwegian rapper Madcon performed at a big scene in the hall, and it was very crowded in here, so many people got scared, since no one could go out. Eventually, the boys calmed down, and left from the hall. Rumours say the boys will be back though, but we will just have to wait and see!


Source: Insignia Cadred

Case Study 3: I30 Investigating

Only this weekend at THE lan to attend if your from the UK and playing host to a few big CoD2 names as they warmup for the upcoming CPC2 expensive items have been 'misplaced' including;
* 4 Laptops
* 5 MS 3.0 Mice
* PC Power cable
* 1 keyboard
* 2 Icemat Siberia Headsets
* Unspecified amount of monitors

Quote
It would seem you can't have a LAN nowadays without stuff going missing.


Source: Cadred.org

Conclusion?

I'am sure theres been many more cases than just the few i've isolated here. A solution? Well first its hard to finda solution that passes by human rights laws and then also the laws of a specific country. For example I beleive it was at the SHGOpen that after 10 'o' clock you could not take any items out of the building. And although I think that its a very good idea, if I remember right it went against danish local law. Hopefully the CPC will run as smooth as the last one with no thiefings and no arguements. For those lucky enough to attend, enjoy!

Please excuse any bad spelling, its never really been my forte