About 150 people in Ontario had their Call of Duty Christmas stolen by Grinches who busted down the cement wall of a game store and plundered it for every one of its preorders the day before the game's launch.
The Game MD of Windsor (it's Detroit's Canadian, not-bankrupt sibling across the river) was victimized by a very well planned heist—so much that the store's owner is convinced it was carried out by someone he knows.
The burglars smashed a hole in an exterior concrete block wall, went inside and destroyed the alarm system. "And then they shopped," owner Roy McLean told CTV News.
That included about 150 copies of Call of Duty: Ghosts, which was his entire stock of the game, forcing the cancellation of a midnight launch event. McLean said he expected between 100 to 130 people camping out for their copy.
Update 2:39 p.m.: I just got off the phone with McLean and he said Game MD was able to make a late-night call to its distributor and get an emergency shipment by Tuesday morning, enough so that anyone who preordered Call of Duty: Ghosts got a copy on the day of release.
Only the midnight launch event was canceled, as police and insurance adjusters investigated the scene. The store was back open Tuesday and undergoing repairs today. (As we spoke a very loud jackhammer was going off in the background. I mistook it for a goal horn.)
Here's your Cindy Lou Who kicker, too.
"Honestly I cried for an hour … going through all our empty cases and seeing all the games that I love," said employee Jennifer Brownell. "It broke my heart."
The burglars were so methodical they made off with the hard drive that stored the footage from the security cameras, before they shut that system down. McLean says he is the store's sole proprietor. "They didn't steal from a company; they stole from me."
Windsor gaming store target of well-planned robbery [CTV News]
To contact the author of this post, write to owen@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @owengood.