Italian police have busted up a retro game trafficking ring worth an estimated $52.5 million USD, and now nine pirates are facing up to eight years in prison.
"Around 12,000 consoles on which more than 47 million pirated video games were illegally stored were seized, for an estimated value of more than €47.5 million (US$52.5 million)," Turin economic crime division boss Alessandro Langella tells news service Agence France-Presse (via SCMP). That estimate includes both the value of the consoles themselves and the theoretical license cost for the games,
The story describes these machines as "counterfeit vintage video game consoles from China," featuring games like "Mario Bros, Street Fighter, and Star Wars." The consoles didn't meet European tech and safety standards, according to the report, and were imported from China to be sold on sites like Amazon.
It's a little difficult to parse the coverage from mainstream outlets here - articles about the "so-called 'retrogaming' trend" clearly aren't being written by hardcore game enthusiasts - but it sounds like these are the sorts of pirate consoles that are all over Amazon these days. These devices often look similar to, say, an NES Classic Edition, but come preloaded with thousands of ROMs that the distributors absolutely do not have the rights to.
If you're thinking it's time for your big break in the retro piracy scene, bear in mind the police did arrest nine Italians for trading counterfeit goods here, and they're now at risk of "up to eight years in prison." By the time they're out of jail, maybe the price on high-quality retro gaming solutions like MISTer will have finally come down enough to squeeze shoddy knock-off consoles out of the market.
There are still plenty of ways to enjoy the best NES games ever made.
