With MW3 hitting shelves in just a couple short hours, most gamers are getting ready to receive their pre-ordered copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. However, some people had very different plans for getting the game, some of them a little more unconventional than others. Some of you may have seen people on your friends list playing MW3 early; this can probably be explained by one of the two stories below.

The first of these was a plan devised by some evidently die-hard fans in France, where a surprisingly well thought-out robbery of a truck containing around 6,000 copies of the game was orchestrated. Two days ago in southern Paris a car collided with a delivery truck that was filled with copies of the game. Tear gas was then used on the delivery truck drivers to distract them while two men in ski masks went into the back of the truck and took all of the games. Although no guns were seen or gunshots were heard, it does seem to sound like something that would be a part of Modern Warfare’s single player campaign. At $60 a game, the total for this robbery would come in at a cool $360,000 although given the publicity surrounding the event one would have to wonder where they are going to be able to sell such a large number of stolen copies.

Tear gas used to steal 6000 copies of MW3 worth $360,000!

The other way some gamers have used to get their hands on an early copy of the game isn’t nearly as unethical as stealing them, and the people behind it aren’t nearly as frightening as a couple masked criminals wielding tear gas, but they are in fact the friendly employees of your neighborhood Kmart store. Yep, as strange as it sounds for a limited time last week, a lot of Kmart stores on the East Coast made the mistake of putting up the game a whopping 5 days before release day.

Apparently the way it works is that a shipment of games arrives at a store with a note informing the store of when to put them on sale. While all of the shipments should’ve included the 11/8 date for the release, apparently these notes told the employees at Kmart to put them on sale immediately. As a result of this, tons of gamers now have legitimately purchases a new copy of Modern Warfare 3, 5 days before the release date.

In response to these two events (mainly the latter), Activision has been toying with the idea of banning gamers who are playing the game before its midnight release. First they said you were clear to play if you have a copy, and then they changed their mind, and now they are back to their original stance of letting gamers who have managed to find an early copy of the game freely play it as they wish.

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