Home Computing and Digital Game Piracy in the 1980s in Portugal

Abstract

Historical narratives on the global digital games industry tend to neglect perspectives from the periphery. This paper contributes insights into the digital games piracy of the 1980s in Portugal, which was an integral part of early home computing culture as in other parts of the world. The paper is based on the content analysis of two Portuguese computing magazines, the publicly available interviews of two Portuguese game developers active in the 1980s, and the semi-structured interviews of Portuguese digital game collectors. We analyze the impact of digital games piracy and early computing on the development of the programming and computing skills of those who participated in this environment. We show how the Portuguese digital games pirate infrastructure fostered the creation and distribution of locally produced games.