News sources in France are reporting that about 6,000 copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, the highly anticipated first person shooter from developer Infinity Ward and publisher Activision, have been stolen from a truck in France and are now fetching record prices on eBay.
TF1 News says that sources close to the investigation in the French judiciary are saying that all the copies were pre-release and two masked men, armed with only knives, were able to get employees of the distributor to get out of their own vehicle by staging a car accident.
They then attacked them with tear gas and the copies were stolen, with their retail value close to 400,000 dollars (290,000 Euro).
Other sources are reporting that copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 are being sold on eBay for prices that are going up to 1,725 dollars (1,252 Euro).
It's not clear how many gamers are willing to pay that amount of money in order to get early access to Modern Warfare 3.
Microsoft has already warned that bans will be incoming for all those who play the game before launch date, reversing an earlier position that as long as the copy was acquired through legal means it was OK to play.
Microsoft probably saw that it was hard if not impossible to distinguish between legally acquired copies and those that were stolen or sold early by a number of retailers who wanted to make a quick buck.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will be launched on the PC, the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 tomorrow all over the world.
Analyst are widely expecting the game to become the biggest seller of the year, just as Black Ops was in 2010, with the launch week generating more than 1 billion dollars in sales, the biggest entertainment launch of 2011.
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