What Thieves Don't Think About: Has Your Gaming Gear Ever Been Stolen?

The first thing that ever got stolen from me was my bicycle. A silly old postman delivery bike with large brown mud flaps. Nothing fancy, just what we could afford. It was a gift from my parents, which is the only reason it mattered as much as it did.

When I realised it was gone, I felt awful in a way I didn’t quite understand. Almost like I had done something wrong. Didn’t protect it. Like it was somehow my fault. I hadn’t. But that feeling stuck around for a while, and I still miss my silly old bicycle.

That was my first proper introduction to what it feels like to have something taken from you. It wasn’t about the bike. It was about someone coming into our space and helping themselves. That part never really leaves you.

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Growing up in Cape Town, and still living here now, crime is just part of the background noise of daily life. It varies a lot depending on where you’re situated. Some neighbourhoods have it better. Others have it far, far worse. The northern suburbs sit somewhere in the middle, which doesn’t mean it’s comfortable. It just means you learn to live with a certain level of awareness.

Most homes around here have alarm systems and armed response services. Burglar bars on every window. Security gates. Sharp, menacing-looking spikes along the top of walls and fences. Many properties have electric fencing and sensor beams. Some go further with flat razor wire running the perimeter. It looks intense from the outside, but after a while you stop seeing it. It just becomes the architecture of where you live.

The problem is that determined thieves don’t really care about any of that. It is not uncommon to hear about alarm systems being ripped out, security gates being forced open, and burglar bars being bent back to allow access. Some homes even have a second internal safety gate inside, one that separates the bedrooms from the rest of the house, for those moments when the outer layers have already failed. That’s just the world we’re in.

I’m not going to dwell too long on the depressing side of it. Everybody experiences crime differently, and I’m not here to tell you how to feel about it. What I do want to talk about is something a little more specific. What it actually means when a thief walks out with your gaming stuff.

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Thieves love electronics. They are desirable and easy to sell. This is not a secret. Televisions, consoles, laptops, phones, monitors, handheld devices. All of it moves quickly on the second-hand market, mostly easy to carry, and all usually worth a pretty penny.

What makes this particularly rough right now is that gaming hardware has never been more expensive. This is the first console generation I can remember where prices went up instead of down over time. Usually, a few years into a generation, you’d expect the hardware to get cheaper. That hasn’t happened. Economic pressures, component shortages, and the AI industry's competition for the same parts have driven prices upward.

I recently discovered that the original Nintendo Switch is selling for more in 2026 than people paid for it brand new years ago, and this is after the Switch 2 has already launched for over a year. That tells you everything about where hardware prices are right now. Thieves know what things are worth. Sometimes they know the market better than we do.

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Beyond the monetary value, there’s the inconvenience. And for gamers, the inconvenience goes deeper than most people would expect.

Take save files as an example. On my Nintendo Switch, I have many hours of progress sitting on the device. If it gets stolen, I lose all of that unless I have cloud saves enabled. Which means I need a Nintendo Online subscription, because unlike Xbox, Nintendo doesn’t offer cloud saves for free. I don’t use Nintendo Online for multiplayer, so I get less out of the subscription. So I’m paying for a subscription primarily to protect my save data, which feels a little awkward. There are some added extras included, like access to a library of NES and SNES titles, but honestly I usually end up emulating those on other devices anyway, where I have more control over the experience and can add proper black sidebars the way I prefer. Also, the vast majority of retro classics I grew up with are not available on the Nintendo Online service.

The other concern is account security. I really don’t want whoever ends up with my Switch to connect it to Wi-Fi and start playing my games and saves, overwriting my progress, or making purchases on my account. Nintendo doesn’t make this especially straightforward to prevent. The best approach I’ve found is to keep purchases password-protected and use the Parental Controls lock feature, set it to the all-ages restriction, so that a PIN is required before any game will launch. It works well enough. On my PS5, I prefer the implementation there, which completely locks the account from signing in, so it’s a cleaner solution overall. 

As a single user at home, a login passcode can feel like a bit of an unnecessary annoyance, but the extra layer of security is worth the mild inconvenience, especially when you consider what’s at stake if the device ends up stolen.

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Then there’s the PC situation, which can be a headache to get up and running again.

For a lot of people, especially those working from home, the PC isn’t just a gaming machine. It’s their livelihood. No PC means no work. It’s that simple. And a laptop, as thin and light as they’ve become, is practically designed to be picked up and walked out with. A large desktop tower is harder to grab quickly, but easy enough, and replacing it doesn’t solve everything immediately.

Getting a new device doesn’t mean you’re back up and running instantly. Programs need to be reinstalled. Accounts need to be reconfigured. Access credentials have to be set up again. Licenses need to be reactivated. Some workflows take time to fully restore, and that’s assuming you have backups of everything, which not everyone does. The theft takes minutes. The recovery takes much longer.

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There are practical things you can do to make the situation a little less awful, even if you can’t stop it from happening in the first place.

Cloud saves are generally worth paying for, even if the subscription feels like an unnecessary expense. Losing your hardware is bad enough without also losing your progress. Keep your accounts secured with strong passwords and two-factor authentication where it’s available. On consoles, set up whatever account lock or parental restriction your platform offers; it adds friction and protects your purchases and personal data.

Keep serial numbers and logins recorded somewhere separate from the devices. This helps with insurance claims and, in rare cases, with recovery if the item turns up at a pawn shop. With some insurance companies, it’s good to manually specify all the items you have and keep that list updated.

Not all policies adequately cover electronics, and limits on individual items can be lower than you’d expect.

For PCs, regular backups to an external drive or cloud service are obvious advice that most people ignore until it’s too late. If your work lives on that machine, treat the backup like part of your job.

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None of this is fun to think about. I’d rather write about the joy of finding a cool Famicom cartridge at a flea market, or the specific pleasure of unboxing a new console. That’s what this blog is really about.

But gaming gear is expensive, it’s desirable, and it’s vulnerable. And if you’ve spent years building a collection or a setup that genuinely means something to you, the idea of losing it to someone who just sees it as quick cash is genuinely awful.

I learned it first with the bicycle. What hurts isn't the thing. It's everything the thing carried with it.

Take care of your stuff. And maybe double-check those cloud saves.