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Reports coming in of two separate shipments hijacked.

We’re right on top of launch week for a new Call of Duty release, which means we can look forward to all sorts of crazy news stories revolving around Activision’s mega franchise. Things have started off with a bang already, as a shipment of the highly-anticipated game was hijacked in France yesterday morning.

In a scene that seems ripped right from the design documents of the Modern Warfare series, two masked men rammed their car into a delivery van carrying some 6,000 copies of the game. The men were armed with knives and tear gas, which they used to subdue the delivery driver before driving off with the shipment, valued at 400,000 euros. Reports from the newspaper Le Pariesien talk of a second robbery involving another shipment by three armed men who had blocked the path of the delivery van. This brings the total value of the two robberies to 780,000 euros. Last year, Call of Duty: Black Ops reached sales of $650 million dollars U.S. in its first five days on sale.

These types of stories tend to pop up around the release of really huge game releases, but rarely are the reports so dramatic. While games may leak to the torrent sites before release or some retailers may break street date, robberies of this magnitude are nearly unheard of in the video game industry.