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Late Monday night/Tuesday morning, the official GTA VI site listed some April Fools’ news which stated that a HMV store in Birmingham (the site gave the address of a specific store) would be selling pre-release copies of the game on 360 at opening time on the 1st of April. Rockstar (presumably they were at the heart of the prank) presumed that GTA fans would either see through the fairly obvious joke, or would arrive at the store only to ask for a copy of an unreleased game and realise their own stupidity.

What they didn’t predict, however, was that fanboys and girls would queue up outside, the night before, in anticipation of a big rush. Around 200 car-theftery fans gathered outside the store, confident that they would be walking away with a copy of this year’s biggest release as soon as the store opened. Unfortunately, the management of the store didn’t take kindly to hundreds of people baying for virtual blood. After arguing for a while, the management called local police. 6 people were arrested for public nuisance disorders.

Rockstar have since removed the news post from their official site, but have not yet made any comment about the arrests.

What say you, gamers? Should Rockstar take the blame for the situation? Chances are the arrested people will only receive fines and no criminal record - should Rockstar reimburse them?

UPDATE: After hearing about the situation, Rockstar North rep Paolo Slirf hopped on the train to Birmingham to try to make amends for the prank. We’re hearing that special edition copies of the game (duffel bag and all) were handed out to those waiting for the game.

Frankly we’re very jealous about the whole situation and wish we lived in the Midlands. Who’s the fool now?

Tags: gta iv

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 1:29 am and is filed under news, ps3, xbox360. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.