speccy software scene in italy
(c) stefano/flydream

The Spectrum scene software in Italy began at the end of 1982 Italy is one of the countries where there was more piracy. When Sinclair built the italian market was quite "empty". Other houses like Commodore, Acorn, IBM had never taken in consideration the idea of conquering the italian market, despi- te the italian market was ready for the home computers. The Sinclair was the first computer producer to decide to make this step.

Some magazines appears for Spectrum with built technical centers, translated ALL the manuals IN A DECENT ITALIAN -which was (and IS) not little in Italy-. The Italian response was extremely positive. But if the Sinclair took in great consideration Italy, the software houses made quite the opposite. It seemed that for the american and english software houses crossing the Alps was too difficult. They ignored Italy in every possible way: they did not translate neither the manuals nor the games, they did not take care to distribute their programs in Italy, they ignored the growing piracy.

Let's consider that in 1982 not many italians knew English (Not even now to tell the truth....), so a program with a manual that was not translated in Italiano was ALMOST unusable. Let's consider that most users of games were children from 9 to 18 that did not know a word of English, and that a game without instructions in Italiano was TOTALLY unusable.

Let's consider that only two publishers (Jackson JCE and Systems editoriale) distributed games in Italy: The italians that wanted to buy the original programs were often in serious difficulties. Exploiting this strange situation (many computers and no programs) two publishers (SIPE and SODIP) had a big Idea: they published programs -WITHOUT- buying their rights. What they did was simple: they took the original game, they changed all the writings that appeared into it. The first thing that they changed in the game was its name, then they exchanged the name of the original software house with the name of their magazine(s) and the names of the authors with their programmers, they translated the other writings in italiano, they added brief instructions for the game on a small magazine and they ,finally, distributed the games in the newsstands. They published cassettes on which there were from 5 to 13 games per sides (generally C64/Spectrum): 20/26/30 games on a tape. The idea worked because until nobody bought the legal rights to reproduce the games , nobody could stop them - except for the original software houses, that, as I have already said, Ignored Italy. There was not an advertising campaign that informed the Italians about what it was happening ,and as those magazines were sold in the newsstands where EVERYONE could see them, most italians were convinced that those games were ORIGINAL. The SIPE started its activity in about 1982, publishing two magazines (Playgames and program, for Spectrum and Commodore Vic 20). Owing to the 'disattention' of the software houses towards the italian market the magazines rapidly grew in number and other publishers began to follow the example of SIPE. In 1986 the SIPE was already publishing 9 magazines: Special program (C64 and Spectrum 48K), Special Playgames (C64 and spectrum 48K), Top playgames ( C64 only), I magnifici 7 (C64 only), Adventure 64 (C64 only), Wargames (C64 only), Playgames (Spectrum only), Program (Spectrum only), HitParade Spectrum (Spectrum only). You can find the dump of these tapes into my site http://zxspectrum.hal.varese.it/cassette.htm In 1986 there were lots of different publishers that had followed this example : Edigamma/Pubblirome (Supergame 2000), Elettronica2000 (Load'n'Run),.... This was the prelude to the development of piracy that would have followed. Infact the earnings of this market increased the power of these houses, so that it was very difficult to take any possible counter-measure. The SIPE , for example, had a trial against the Jackson JCE because it had published under the false name of "HALFPENNY FAMILY" the game "WALLY FAMILY" for C64, game of which Jackson had bought the copyrights. The SIPE lost the trial, and nonetheless published on a later magazine the SPECTRUM VERSION of the same game .... For years the Italian scene was dominated from the games distributed from publishers that acted like SIPE. Later on the things changed. Infact cracking and changing the headtitles of the videogames and writing instructions in italiano was an hard work and as the number of games grew in number the SIPE met with greater and greater difficulties, owing to the competition of other groups that directly distributed cracked versions of the games. These groups acted in Italy like they did in the most of the European countries: they bought the cracked game from a group of crackers, then they put them on cassette/disks and distributed them. One of the most famous distributors in Italy was ALGA SOFT that distributed games in Napoli and in the Southern Italy. ALGA SOFT generally took the games from F4CG. It is to be said that while the actions of the groups like SIPE were partially illegal for the italian laws (partially because ,according to the italian laws of that time, if NOBODY had bought the copyrights , nobody could claim for them) the actions of the ALGA SOFT were TOTALLY ILLEGAL (The ALGA SOFT was not even a registered publisher and did not pay taxes) Despite this, the greatest effectiveness of the other system represented a a strong threaten to the "LEGAL" publishers. SIPE, infact,could not publish more than 10-13 games on each magazine because the work to be done was otherwise too heavy, while ALGA SOFT had no problems in publishing 15/30 games on each number. The problem of the instructions in Italiano of the games was "solved" because magazines like ZZAP!!, at that time provided with them. This background brought Italy to be the 2nd country with the highest rate of piracy. But it also led Italy to an Incredible diffusion of Spectrum and C64,because it was possible to find games at very low prices. Piracy , had an incredible number of negative effects. It damaged the software houses that produced the original games. And it also prevented the birth of Italian software houses - Every Italian programmer knew that writing a game could not bring any earnings at all, and that the best way to make earnings was..... become a cracker. This meant that , for years, there was little Italian productions of videogames. Someone might be asking : have things changed ? Answer : Yes, they have worsened. The situation grew worse with the diffusion of Amiga. During the period in which Amiga began to replace C64 and Spectrum in the italian market some software houses began to take care of what it was happening in Italy. Not only because of the lots of earnings lost, but even because Italy , in this situation, risked to become a Europe-wide cracking/distribution center of pirate software. Software houses had to meet with serious difficulties. The first great obstacle was the absence ,in Italy, of laws regarding directly software, and for this reason even setting up a trial against an illegal distributor was not that easy. The second great obstacle was the fact that during years of disattention the piracy had grown far off any imaginable limit. The same CAMORRA (The equivalent in Napoli of the sicilian MAFIA) was making money on the "traffic" of illegal games. The first problem was solved with the introduction of laws about software. But in the meanwhile a new great obstacle was born: the very high price of games- due to the fact that in Italy there were (are) only two big importers of games: LEADER and CTO.