JVTech News 12,000 consoles and 47 million video games: Italian customs have just made a record seizure that smells of retrogaming
Published on 09/18/2024 at 3:10 p.m.
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Italian customs have dealt a major blow to the black market for retrogaming. Thousands of counterfeit vintage consoles, loaded with millions of pirated games, have been seized and destroyed.
12,000 consoles intercepted and destroyed
If you are a video game enthusiast, you will know that retrogaming has seen a real resurgence of interest in recent years. In fact, This market is so lucrative that unscrupulous traffickers are increasingly becoming interested in it.. In Italy, Customs have also uncovered a vast network of counterfeit vintage consoles.undermining the video game industry and infringing on the rights of creators.
According to Colonel Alessandro Langella, of Turin customs, Nearly 12,000 counterfeit consoles were seized, with an estimated value of more than 47.5 million euros.These consoles, produced clandestinely in China, perfectly imitated the iconic models of the 1980s and 1990s, manufactured by Nintendo, Sega or Atari. Their internal memory illegally contained more than 47 million pirated video gamesincluding such popular titles as Mario Bros and Street Fighter.
Dangerous imitations
As Italian customs explained, these counterfeit consoles posed numerous risks to consumers. Produced in disregard of European safety standards, they could cause domestic accidentscausing significant overheating or short circuits. In addition, their manufacturing quality was often poor, leading to frequent breakdowns and a limited lifespan.
This massive seizure is a severe blow to the video game industry, which has seen its revenues reduced by piracy. As you know, publishers and developers invest considerable sums of money in the creation of video games and, unfortunately, counterfeiting deprives them of part of this income.jeopardizing their ability to finance new projects.
The operation carried out by Italian customs benefited from the collaboration of Amazon, which provided valuable information to investigators. The nine people arrested in connection with the case face up to eight years in prison.With this record seizure, the Italian authorities intend to send a strong signal to traffickers and dissuade other players from engaging in this type of illegal activity.
