Stealing is bad, nuff said.

I spend a 8-hour shift at work and come home to find an explosive amount of drama and hysteria has flooded several popular online destinations. I am talking about Kotaku, a certain Brazillian freelancer, and Ziff Davis. To put it simply, those two new screenshots that circulated faster than any virus epidemic turned for the worst. Why? Because the leaked info was in fact, the same "intellectual property" which was published in the SF4 cover story. You know… the same story which my colleague Shane Bettenhausen worked so hard to put into words that I'd be able to say "nice job" just won't have the same impact now.

See, that certain Brazillian freelancer actually used to work for EGM Brazil and it turns out that he stole a password to EGM USA's servers, posted the information on his blog (which was *surprise* shut down of course). As for Kotaku's role in this… well, they initially jumped the gun and sort of gave ZD the middle finger. Funny how we all roll in the media world when all the facts aren't revealed. Everyone's getting along now it seems, after Dan Hsu set the record straight leading to Kotaku to take a step back and realize: shoot, we were wrong — shame on you Douglas for being a thief and forcing James Mielke to write an extensive blog reiterating all the hard work that goes into creating a successful publication and building strong relationships with videogame developers (like Capcom for instance).

It's crazy y'know… all this time, I just wanted to kick back with the message board patrons talking about how I am finding it difficult to keep an open-mind (that's a story for another blog), but instead — I am left pondering how pathetic this guy had to be. And if I were in Shane's shoes, I'd certainly feel devastated, especially since he was the first editor anywhere to actually have some hands-on time. Some people might not see this as a big deal because those shots eventually would have made their way to the net (but in case you haven't figured it out… that's a big no, no… seriously). If things aren't sinking in yet, go read Milky's blog, take it all in and then you'll see that my colleagues in the field certainly are justified to be upset. This was a very big story for EGM and that's been tainted.