Last week, we shared reports of security lapses at E3 2017, an event organized by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA). With members of public being invited for the first time, there was a need for heightened security, which many visitors including developers felt was missing. Although ESA defended itself and branded the event a “success” in terms of security arrangements, some damning new allegations of security lapses have surfaced as incidents including robberies allegedly carried out by the guards themselves have come to light.
An exhibitor, who didn’t want to be identified due to fear of retaliation from ESA, told Kotaku:
Our meeting room was broken into the night before the show started by E3 security staff. They stole a laptop, two consoles, and four headsets. They used one of our backpacks to get it out. [Security] had clear camera footage of the guards entering and exiting, but because they couldn’t actually see them carrying the stuff, they gave us some bullshit excuse about it not being prosecutable/enforceable. We’re still pushing them for a satisfactory conclusion.
Another representative of the same company later said that the guards were identified but they were told that all the security company could do was fire them. The rep also said that if they choose to attend next year, they’ll have to invest in their own private security, resulting in a higher cost of attending the event.
Indie studio Milky Tea was also robbed at the event, albeit by attendees. While they were showcasing a game, an attendee created a distraction while another one picked up the studio’s laptops and walked away. This apparently happened twice in a single day and Milky Tea has yet to recover the laptops although they note that the security team did try to help afterwards.
Elsewhere, Brandon Sheffield of Necrosoft Games and Mathew Kumar of MK-Ultra told Kotaku that they witnessed a man collapse and hit his head pretty hard outside the convention center. While attendees rushed to call 911, a guard nearby refused to come forward to help even when the injured man began to display seizure-like symptoms. Sheffield said that the guards weren’t trained to deal with the situation. He wrote:
Essentially, for those first five-or-so minutes, in spite of us having a door security person with a walkie-talkie in our line of sight and shouting distance, we complete amateurs were on our own dealing with this guy. Nobody saw what happened, nobody around was a medic of any kind, so we were just using our best judgment in keeping this guy from… dying?
The full report can be found at the link below and details more incidents.
What do our readers think of this?
[Source: Kotaku]
