With Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress just around the corner, it certainly was disappointing, but not at all surprising, to see very few exciting new smartphones unveiled and demoed in Las Vegas for the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show last week.

The timing didn’t feel right for sequels to any of 2016’s big VR headset releases either, so instead, we witnessed a flood of Amazon Echo copycats, Surface Pro 4 contenders, the occasional Android Wear 2.0 smartwatch, and… a three-screened laptop.

More like a laptop concept, to be fair, with no availability information or price tag attached to its tentative moniker. Which probably made Razer’s Project Valerie all the more appealing for as-yet unidentified burglars who managed to illicitly snatch two unnamed prototypes from the company’s CES booth.

In an understandably angered social media post, Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan voiced suspicions of industrial espionage, highlighting “cheating doesn’t sit well with us”, and “penalties for such crimes are grievous.”

Of course, it is up to law enforcement officers and investigators to identify and apprehend the culprits, as well as determine their motives and intentions for the two stolen pre-release products. They may not want to copy their designs and technologies, but merely sell them to the highest bidder. And trust us, both Project Valerie and Project Ariana, the world’s first projection system aimed at immersive gaming, are worth a fortune right now.

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