A New Jersey video game shop fell victim to a calculated "swatting" attempt on Saturday night—one that, according to reports, nearly saw the victim play an active role in inflaming the police response.

The story began by resembling far too many other recent swatting attempts. As Jersey area news site Cliff View Pilot reported, Passaic County officers received an anonymous, phony tip about a hostage situation with shotguns and wounded victims. The location in question was a video game store in Clifton, New Jersey, called Digital Press. The store was hosting its usual monthly gaming meetup that night—ironically, one devoted to "super cute" video games—and the county sheriff's department sent a SWAT team to the shopping strip in question to investigate.

What made this swatting different from other recent high-profile cases, according to tips sent to gaming site Kotaku, was that the victims also received an anonymous call that attempted to pour gasoline on the fire. The game shop's Web administrator, Frankie Viturello, told a story of seeing a police presence begin to descend upon the store's shopping district, at which point the 40-strong crowd of gamers locked the shop's doors and relocated away from the windows and toward the building's basement. Soon afterward, the shop received a call from a supposed fire department representative.

“Full riot gear with assault weapons”

That caller asked the store to close its blinds, which it did. After that, the caller asked the store employee to peek outdoors and "shout something to the effect of, 'Clear the area, somebody has a gun,'" at which point the store owner interfered, hung up, and contacted the local police department. The incident ended with the SWAT team entering the building "in full riot gear with assault weapons," handcuffing all of the attendees and examining the premises before concluding that the anonymous hostage-situation tip was indeed false.

In a statement to New Jersey newspaper The Record , Clifton Police Detective Sergeant Robert Bracken confirmed that the department was actively seeking the phony tipster, who would foot the bill for the SWAT response's expenses upon being apprehended. He noted that the tip had been vetted for credibility before being acted upon, but Bracken declined to clarify what that meant exactly. We have reached out to the Passaic County Sheriff’s Office with questions about the incident, and we will update this report if we get a response.

Two American teenagers have faced high-profile swatting charges in the past two months. Like this incident, both alleged perpetrators targeted fans of video games, and the practice has been used to attack other gaming fans and critics of the GamerGate hashtag. In the meantime, Digital Press is taking the incident in stride, and Viturello suggested to Kotaku that the monthly game night's next iteration would revolve around classic, law enforcement-themed video games like Virtua Cop and NARC.