Private Investigators Help Police Track Down MW2 Pirate

There’s an old saying in marketing that goes: “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” That may or may not be true, but I suspect Activision and Infinity Ward have had their fingers crossed lately that it is. Their new game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, has possibly had more publicity in the past week than most games get in their entire development cycle; and most of it has been of the bad variety. From backlash over dropping dedicated server support for PC, to controversial leaked video footage, to the ill-recieved F.A.G.S. video, they haven’t had much good news of late; not that they seem too worried.

They do have one news piece to celebrate however. Yesterday, Venturebeat reported that the Miami-Dade police department, tipped off by private investigation firm IPCybercrime, arrested a hacker they suspect is at least partly responsible for thousands of illegal copies of Modern Warfare 2 showing up on torrent sites across the Net.

IPCybercrime was brought in by Activision to investigate when someone posted on Craigslist that they had Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 bundles for sale, which, as it turned out, had been stolen by a “box boy at a major retail chain.” But catching the thief was only the beginning for IPCybercrime.

It was from this listing that the hacker, an 18 year old male named Christian Del Amo, managed to get hold of a copy of MW2 and crack the anti-piracy code. The investigators managed to track him using Facebook and an e-mail address he left in a  posting on an Xbox 360 modding/piracy site. Once they had located him they turned the info over to the Miami-Dade police department, who made the arrest.

While Del Amo has been caught, the damage for Activision may have already been done, as this past Monday illegal copies of Modern Warfare 2 flooded onto torrent sites; which is about the same time Del Amo announced he had cracked the code on the disk. The best they can do is hope that this incident will serve as a deterrent to software pirates in the future… although it’s probably not likely. And realistically, illegal copies of the game would have shown up immediately after the November 1oth release anyway. But, in the meantime, at least the suits over at the big ‘A’ have a little bit of good Modern Warfare 2 news to bask in.

[Via: Venturebeat]

Tags: Activision Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Infinity Ward Modern Warfare 2 piracy Xbox 360