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A man stole over $40,000 worth of merchandise and technology from Valve

A man stole over $40,000 worth of merchandise and technology from Valve

Charges were pressed against a man on September 25th for stealing more than $40,000 worth of goods from PC games giant Valve.

According to Polygon, Shaun Shaputis from Washington broke into the Steam owner’s Bellevue office on June 17th 2018 through a public restaurant in the building using a recycling bin to move all stolen property undetected.

Shaputis reportedly stole 23 PlayStation 4 games, 15 Xbox One games, “15 to 20” Asus laptops, Nintendo Switch and Steam hardware as well as promotional items and memorabilia. All this had a total value of $42,000.

Shaputis made $336 at a GameStop in Bellevue - where sold the 43 games he stole from Valve’s office. He later told police that he took so many items that he couldn’t remember everything stolen, adding that he grabbed “random items” throwing them in the recycling bin.

A police rep speaking to Polygon said that it wasn’t able to comment on the case but did mention a copy of half-life 3 being stolen. It’s unclear if this is a joke or not, but Valve has never said that a version of the eagerly-awaited release had been stolen.

Shaputis apparently stored the rest of the stolen property in his Geo Prism car - where the police found the missing items, in addition to “drug paraphernalia”.

When the charges were filed, Shaputis had six active warrants against him. Should he fail to show up to his hearing, a further warrant will be issued.

The arraignment hearing for Shaputis is on October 9th.


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Staff Writer

Kayleigh is the Staff Writer for PocketGamer.biz. Besides PGbiz and PCGI she has written as a list writer for Game Rant, rambling about any and all things games related. You can also find her on Twitter talking utter nonsense.