Ridiculous Fishing dev has bag of precious hardware stolen at E3

Vlambeer, the talented indie team behind Ridiculous Fishing and the upcoming Luftrausers, had a bag containing a Vita dev kit, Vita, laptop, two iPads and a Kindle Fire swiped during E3 this week in LA.

Studio co-founder Rami Ismail told Polygon that "it kind of feels like Vlambeer got stolen".

"We have good backups," he added. "We take good care of everything. We've got decent backups to continue working. It's just a giant pain."

The theft occurred not at the LA Convention Centre but at a peripheral social event - party - at a Hotel pool bar early on Thursday morning.

A random attack of opportunity? Not necessarily - when Ismail reported the theft to the authorities he was asked if he was in town for the convention, E3. "Apparently there had been quite a few reports about stuff that was stolen," he said.

"They actually mentioned that it was likely people had been targeting people that were at the convention."

Polygon also apparently suffered a theft, this time at the LA Convention Centre, when a backpack with camera equipment was stolen from its booth.

Enough other people experienced similar thefts that the organiser of E3, the ESA (Entertainment Software Association) warned press about their valuables and starting more strictly checking photo IDs.

Despite that, the ESA commented as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. To Polygon it said: "Our security team and attendees did an excellent job in securing valuables on-site. There were minimal occurrences this year and we appreciate everyone's vigilance in following common sense procedures."