In 2018, there was a break-in at Valve’s offices in Bellevue, WA. Some 15 Xbox One and 23 PlayStation 4 games, between 15-20 Asus laptops, an undisclosed number of Switch and steam machine consoles, and Gabe Newell’s minigun prop from an interview were all taken. Now someone has been charged in that particular crime; Shawn Shaputis is being charged with one count of burglary and one count of trafficking in stolen property, as he sold the aforementioned games to a Bellevue GameStop and was caught on camera doing so.
Yes, that really happened.
Shaputis supposedly entered a public restaurant and then gained access to the building via a non-functional stairwell door, throwing the items in question in a large rolling recycling can before “recycling” the games into around $300 at GameStop. There’s no word on the disposition of the other items, including the sentimental value of the prop Newell once posed in. We can only hope that during the company’s long nightmare of having slightly fewer things in their office they found the time to work on some currently neglected projects.
