The 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.
Yup. As far as the first guy goes, the company's action was proportionate: forcing him to pay for the copy, and firing him for breaching the company's trust. A criminal charge would have ruined his life, and for no gain to the company, or (in my opinion) to the rest of society.
The typical punishment for petty theft in Japan is having to pay for the item and a slap on the wrist. If you show remorse, settle with the victim, and aren't a repeat offender, prosecutors in Japan will pretty much never take it to a formal trial. Amazon gets no say in this: If prosecutors aren't interested, there won't be a trial. It's their exclusive authority.
>According to Japanese criminal procedure article 248, a prosecutor may choose not to prosecute when prosecution is deemed unnecessary considering the character, age, and background of the offender, the severity of the offense, and the circumstances following the offense.[1]
Hypotheticals are terrible, but what if we change the situation a little bit. Instead of Amazon, let's have the person work at a retail store, and instead of meerly taking a copy of Zelda, they also leave payment in the till. Of course, their retail system may not allow them to run a sale on a game before the street date, so they may have to miscode it. Then it's not stealing, instead it's breaking the street date and messing up inventory. Also, let's assume there's well more than enough copies that nobody ends up not getting a copy of the game because he took it.
Would that be a loophole then?
An alternate hypothetical is he orders it on amazon, all the orders are boxed early, but not shipped and he finds his box and takes it home. Doesn't match reality, but makes a nice hypothetical.
The 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.
Lots 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.
I kind of don’t understand how someone’s gonna go through all that work, and not realize that someone on the Internet is going to leak the game and you can just play it on a hacked console or an emulator.
This 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
I 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).
Honest 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?
There are lots of theaters in NYC where you can work as a volunteer usher to see a show for free. I've got one friend who saw probably 20+ things over a couple of years that way.
Reminds 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
In 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.
> 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.
While what you are saying makes sense the reverse is also true: In the long run would I be happy that I stayed at work that one extra day instead of playing Cyberpunk 2077? Years from now would I conclude that extra day at work instead of having fun was worth it?
There's enough room in life for short term immediate reward. The most obvious example is having a nice meal. You don't need to spend time cooking or pay a lot for a fancy restaurant, and in hindsight none of it is really worth it since you could have subsisted on nutrient paste and water, yet the food industry continues to thrive regardless.
Yeah 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.
Oh, 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!
> I wonder whether they would have been caught if they had actually quit
Probably not. Which is to say, I'm sure other people have done something very similar, but because they didn't draw attention to themselves by stopping to show up, they didn't get make the news.
I'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.
I 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.
This 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.
Comments 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.
I 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)
Readit News
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.
The typical punishment for petty theft in Japan is having to pay for the item and a slap on the wrist. If you show remorse, settle with the victim, and aren't a repeat offender, prosecutors in Japan will pretty much never take it to a formal trial. Amazon gets no say in this: If prosecutors aren't interested, there won't be a trial. It's their exclusive authority.
>According to Japanese criminal procedure article 248, a prosecutor may choose not to prosecute when prosecution is deemed unnecessary considering the character, age, and background of the offender, the severity of the offense, and the circumstances following the offense.[1]
[1]: https://www.criminaldefensejapan.com/post/how-much-does-it-c...
I'm not sure if that's being considered at all, recent example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36127800
Deleted Comment
I wouldn’t call stealing, even a high effort one, a loophole any more than I’d call shoplifting a life hack.
Would that be a loophole then?
An alternate hypothetical is he orders it on amazon, all the orders are boxed early, but not shipped and he finds his box and takes it home. Doesn't match reality, but makes a nice hypothetical.
It's hard to see a victim here. The kid stole for the early access, he would have gladly paid for the game.
So really the rule he's intending to break is you know, "you're not allowed to look at this until X date"
The shoplifting is a byproduct.
I can see a gray area. There's a lot of stupid laws painted in black and white.
It is not as though Amazon is really going to miss one copy of Zelda, so it's morally not too bad.
> I wouldn’t call stealing, even a high effort one, a loophole any more than I’d call shoplifting a life hack.
I sort of agree with your equating these, except I think they are both valid.
[1] https://www.insider.com/taylor-swift-eras-tour-nashville-res...
[2] https://fun107.com/a-new-bedford-woman-went-as-far-as-landin...
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.
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.
That his values are really messed up and they're probably not trustworthy, right?
/s
Also they're hiring at the nearby warehouse if anyone's interested!
Probably not. Which is to say, I'm sure other people have done something very similar, but because they didn't draw attention to themselves by stopping to show up, they didn't get make the news.
However, the emulator is about as difficult as double clicking.
- A hackable/hardmodded console (plenty on ebay if you don't have one)
- A computer
- An internet connection
- Basic reading ability
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Dell+Glover
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.
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)
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?