To steal a Starfield

 Phantom Thief of Games

By the time this goes out, Starfield will already be drowning out the feeds of all the world and we'll be basking in whatever comes, the good or the bad of the game that could make or break Bethesda and Microsoft along with them. A title with so much overwhelming pressure on it's head that I would go so far as to call it a lost cause, had Baldur's Gate 3 not recently dropped to remind us that modern gaming can still be exceptional when we least expect it to be. But is a studio as big and old as Bethesda still capable of connecting with people on that same level? Well, they're certainly big enough to still get hearts and minds racing with their ad campaigns at least! (Which is, you know, pretty much the only thing you need to do when it comes to video games. Right?)

I mean, that's the only reason I can imagine why so many people have taken absolute leave of all their senses in the lead-up to this game. Sure, there's the typical 'spending the year's holiday leave on Starfield release month' which has become something of a recurrent ritual with these big yearly launches- (At least there's literally no chance of Bethesda moving this launch until the next year like CDPR would have!) but then it inevitably gets weirder. People are roleplaying that the game is already out and discussing how they feel about it's feature slate on Reddit, (because the fantasy world which is coming out isn't enough, we need to project the fantasy upon ourselves now, dammit!) and more enterprising, and less scrupulous, individuals have taken leave of their basic functions to perform the most stupid heist of all time. I'm talking about people who literally stole the game. 

Now the topic of individuals stealing games isn't an entirely new phenom. In fact, recently we heard about something very similar with a kid who managed to hijack possession of Rockstar's internal servers and leak out the public's first look of GTA 6. He apparently also managed to sneak the source code for GTA V and VI onto his hard-drives and decided to play 'super villain' auctioning it off to the highest bidder before he was tracked down and hauled into justice. The kid ended up slinking away from repercussions thanks to behind-the-scenes machinations that have sparked many a debate online- (Personally I'm not certain whether or not hacking a video game developer qualifies you for a CIA internship but go off 'conspiracy-Twitter'.) but I can assure you what happened with Starfield in nowhere in that kind of ballpark.

Because that story had some techie coolness to it, aside from the bizarre terrorist-style ransoming that the perpetrator concerningly defaulted to. (That's a kid who definitely played 'No Russian' over and over to maximize his body count.) This story concerns an absolute dredge of society, an absolute goober, who proceeded to perform the very physical crime of stealing a copy of Starfield and then performed as big of a mistake as his Father did the day he forgot to bring his rubber to the alley behind the club- this genius posted a Twitter video of himself reviewing the game that he himself stole. No mask. No visuals. Just the face of the criminal admitting to the crime that he committed. Some people give crime a bad name...

So our genius over here is the source of about 45 minutes of uploaded gameplay to the internet, provided to us in glorious cell-phone camera quality, because what else do you expect from a man like this? Which is, of course, pretty degrading for Bethesda in one of their key marketing windows for terrible quality footage to find it's way out into the ether- so if there was any way to make sure you get on the companies bad side, that was it. Steal their content, break their copyright provisions and then do it in such a way that makes the game look like trash. My man's only saving grace was he did this to Bethesda and not to Nintendo, because we all know the Nintendo pedigree of 'sue you for so much money your grand children will be paying it off."

Then our protagonist tried to commit another crime to add onto his rap sheet by selling off his stolen property on Mercari. If you've seen the various copies of Starfield that are floating around for $650, that'll be your guy. Only get this, all these listing went up less than a week before the game was due out. (Due out in early access but still... seriously?) What kind of deranged moron would charge 10x the price of the game just to play it two weeks early, at the best? Not that I want to give any ideas to criminals or anything, but the best you can probably get away with is $10 upcharge, but even that is nothing to scoff because hey- it's all profit: you stole the damn things to begin with! I can't even spare a single brain cell to process this stupidity, I swear.

But I have to rewind a little to go back to that magnum opus moment. The time in his life that will forever be listed as his very own Mona Lisa Masterpiece. When our mistake of evolution, our inbred idiot, recorded a video of his own face reviewing the game on Twitter. And his transcript went a little like this. "Todd, no offense man, dat's a good game." He managed to miraculously say whilst his last remaining neurons knocked some dying sparks of thought into his head like fireflys lazily exploding on impact with a insect light. "They were saying I play like a- like a beginner cause I'm not a ghame ex-pert. I was just trying sumthin out. That's a good game ya'll don wanna miss it. Starfield fur real." Indeed, dear Lenny- now think about the rabbits and turn away.

Can you believe they arrested this man? I mean seriously, talk about picking on the lowest common rung of society! Don't police have something better to do like... set up a sting with a local terrorist cell only to discover that the cell they managed to infiltrate was actually populated entirely by insiders from other law enforcement organisations all over the country that all thought they were performing their own sting? (Actual real thing that happened.) At least we can now say that no matter what becomes of Starfield, rain or shine, it heralded one of the most insane stories we can recount to our day of prospective consumers taking things way too far. And at least the Internet age means this goofy SOB will live on in the minds of the morbidly bewildered... at least until the next stupid thing happens. I'll give a week.