Gamers enraged, riots imminent!

By DarkArmada

© Lee Edgerton 2008

“`UPDATE: (Ed) It seems a few of our team have secured one of the infamous DVD-Crave early releases, with one of our staff members now at the top of Australia’s GTAIV Leader Board . . Congratulations GrathuisXR . . . keep up the great work. So good readers, expect to find a great review and impressions come release time form some of our staff writers. (yes- we’re sticking to embargo by Rockstar, we love our site and don’t want to lose Rockstar’s support) . .

However, we can not take responsibility for DVD-Crave’s own internal stuff up which has allowed some of our staff legitimately obtaining and playing the games they received legally, albeit somewhat early than R* had wanted. Oh, and btw, there were certainly more than just the 3-4 copies release that DVD-Crave state. Around 20 or so copies of GTA IV made it out into the wild here in Australia.

“`It’s been brought to the surface that DVD-Crave have, due to reasons at this stage unknown, allowed some pre-ordered copies of GTAIV to slip through the cracks and arrive on Australian gamers’ doorsteps all across Australia. This of course is days before the official release date of the 29th April sending local gamers into a fury.

Early reports about the action taken against DVD-Crave by Take Two and Rockstar are varied, with the official stance that nothing is happening as yet, while some reports are that Rockstar/Take Two have already closed DVD-Crave’s account so that no future titles may be sold on their popular online gaming store.

So far customers that have contacted DVD-Crave have been told that if their copy has not yet been sent, the shipping date stands firm at 29/04/08. Clearly this is not sitting well with gamers dying to play their copy of what many are considering to be the most anticipated title this year.

Even worse for the online gaming store is their connection to All Interactive as stated by this anonymous source.

Dvdcrave are connected to All Interactive Distribution Australia’s largest games distributor. We have not been able to confirm whether Rockstar has contacted either companies as there seems to be total chaos over at AI currently.

At this stage AI are urging the stores they supply to still not break the street
date yet

One thing that those of us here at X360.com.au would like to remind all gamers waiting eagerly for their copy of GTAIV is don’t shoot the messenger. It’s very easy to take out your frustration at the voice on the other end of the phone, but don’t. Just be patient and we’ll all be playing GTAIV in no time!

Watch this space for further updates about DVD-Crave and any other store breaking this embargo.

Update: Here is the official word from DVD-Crave on their website.

Due to a shipping error three of our customers might well have received their copies of GTA4 this morning…
Please appreciate that this was an error on our part and that DVDCrave is committed to abiding by the official world wide street date of Tuesday the 29th.
The release of this game is a huge event, so please hang in there until the 29th as you won’t be disappointed!