The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops – Part Nine

If you read The Kwiksave Chronicles of Slobberchops , then I can tell you this is going to be in a similar vein to that series. Yeah, it's going to go on and on and maybe never end. Ready?

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The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops will go into some detail over the next few weeks.. er articles about part of my life when I was young, misguided and brash.

Like many, I was once a Software Pirate. That's not unusual in itself but I have a few stories to tell about what happened, and I'll try and not bore you all to tears.

Other article's in this series:


The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops – Part One
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops – Part Two
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops – Part Three
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops – Part Four
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops – Part Five
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops – Part Six
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops – Part Seven
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops – Part Eight

August 1988

Micro Peripherals moved their distribution business company to new office space in Clayton-le-Moors. For me, the change in location was inconsequential.

Yes, it was a little further to travel and the new offices might have been all bright, new and shiny, but they lacked the character of the original building.

I was starting to have eyes on the Sales team, not in terms of the torture I may endure from ‘ID’ but from the potential benefits. Some of them had company cars and they made a shit load of money if they were successful; I wanted some of that.

The problem was I was not a sales person, and didn’t have the ‘talk’. It still amazes me that in 1988 as a tech you could demand things and get them too.

A compromise was reached that I would assist the field sales people as their personal tech, get a top of the range Commodore 386 (Woah, the power!), and my own desk with a high-backed chair (Woah the prestige!).

It made a change to be out more frequently and not stuck behind a desk all day and for a while I was enjoying this new role though it was hardly challenging.

Shortly after all this happened, ‘Jerzei Balowski’ called me from his new company (MSL) in a headhunting exercise. They needed another tech and wanted me to join them.

Blimey, I didn’t even need an interview as my reputation at this point was sufficient to wangle this new job. I got together with Jerzei and he showed me around the offices.

They were small, crappy and messy was my impression but I was not going to be deterred and pressed on with my resignation.

Micro Peripherals had been good to me in terms of salary raises. In the space of 18 months I had gone from £5000 - £5700 - £7500 - £8500 a year.

It's peanuts in today’s standards and was not good then, but the percentage rise was quite phenomenal in that short space of time.

MSL had £9200 on the table and I was going to be the cheap whore for whoever paid the most. ‘ID’ quickly got wind that I was about to leave and hauled me into an office.

‘What makes you think you’re so good that you can blackmail my company’, he sneered.

Using my experience of the @steddyman experience my retort was, ‘If I’m not that good then you won’t mind if I leave so you can get someone better’

The gamble worked, and ‘ID’ was asking me what it would take to keep me.

‘£11000 a year and I’ll stay’, (for the moment I thought silently). He wasn’t too happy about it but I had got my £2500 a year increase using his inherent weakness.

The Amiga still reigned king as the piracy platform by the end of 1988, with some great games like ‘It Came from the Desert’ and ‘The Great Giana Sisters’.

The latter was a platform game which was snuck out of a developer’s environment and spread like wildfire among the pirates long before it gained an official release.

Digital material started appearing too, I remember ‘You’re the Voice’ (John Farnham), ‘Oh Yeah’ (Yello) and some music tune named ‘Blowfly’ who had a bloke swearing ‘Who the fuck are you’ that were among three disks that did the rounds featuring digitised sound from original songs.

After a little searching I found the 'Blowfly' song. It always made me laugh.

I had never heard anything like this before and was astounded by the advancements. You couldn’t buy these demos as they were only available within the piracy community but they were truly cutting edge.

We found a computer club in Swinton, Manchester that was held in a huge pub. Talk about crowded, the place was heaving and not with educational pimple faced geek types, but hard-core pirates with the usual ethics.

Myself and HootMon were regular visitors, and found we needed to buy yet more blanks to cope with the sheer amount of stuff on offer. I believe it got busted eventually; these things can only go on for so long before attracting the attention of Plod.

1989 was to be a pivotal year for me. Despite the attempts of Micro Peripherals trying to keep hold of me I was destined to move to the ‘King of Distributers' and anyone of any substance followed me either before or after I departed.

To be continued...

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