It is not just bad wording. This is still a questionable remark that smells of wrong assumptions about southern EU (and thus gets people irritated).

Still false. There were already police raids for 'pirate' games in the 80s.

Example, July 1986 [0]: "Nine Madrid university students involved in a thriving pirated video game business"

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  0: https://www.abc.es/archivo/periodicos/abc-sevilla-19860718-40.html