Tiziano Tredese urges lawmakers to keep vintage arcade rules distinct from slots

Tiziano Tredese used a public intervention at the presentation of Italy's DDL 2038 bill on vintage arcade cabinets to call for the law to keep non-prize amusement machines separate from cash-prize machines. The presentation took place in Rome on 26 October 2026 in the Sala Caduti di Nassiriya at Palazzo Madama, the seat of the Senate of the Republic. Tredese spoke from the audience, according to the report.

Tredese focused on the distinction under Article 110 of the Testo unico delle leggi di pubblica sicurezza (TULPS) between machines covered by paragraph 6, which include those with cash prizes, and those under paragraph 7, intended for entertainment without cash prizes. He said the separation is a fundamental principle of Italian law that should be preserved in future legislation. He recalled that in 2002 Italian parliamentarians distinguished paragraph 7 from paragraph 6, recognising that the machines were different and setting specific rules.

According to Tredese, later regulatory interventions, particularly at territorial level, progressively weakened that separation by introducing restrictions that also applied to machines without prizes. He said there is now a risk of merging paragraph 7 and paragraph 6 again and creating the usual confusion.

He expressed particular concern about rules on minimum distances from so-called sensitive locations, such as schools, healthcare facilities and other places identified by regional and municipal rules. In his view, applying those constraints to paragraph 7 machines would be a mistake because it would equate entertainment without cash prizes with forms of gambling that carry different risks and purposes. He said the issue of distances from sensitive locations is very dangerous because of the risk of repeating the same error.

Tredese argued that territorial restrictions designed for cash-prize machines should not be automatically extended to arcade video games, pinball machines and other devices intended solely for amusement. He said such an approach could affect not only the activity of sector operators but also the recovery and valorisation of vintage cabinets that the DDL 2038 pursues.

The intervention also covered age limits introduced in some territories for access to or use of certain categories of machines. Tredese criticised the general application of those restrictions to pure entertainment, saying national law has historically distinguished machines without prizes from those with cash prizes. In his view, further regional or municipal limits risk producing a fragmented framework in which identical machines are subject to different rules depending on the territory, creating uncertainty for managers, collectors and operators and potentially hindering initiatives to preserve historic video games.

He cited Veneto as a reference for the distinction between the two categories of machines, saying the region managed to keep paragraph 7 outside the rules set for paragraph 6. He also cited Venice as an example of administrative interventions that, in his account, introduced further constraints.

Tredese also criticised restrictive policies adopted in recent years, saying they had penalised activities not directly connected to cash-prize gambling. He said overlapping categories of machines had produced negative effects across the sector, feeding interpretative uncertainty and operational difficulties, and called for the original approach of Article 110 of the TULPS to be preserved with separate rules for paragraph 7 machines.

He linked the question to the DDL 2038, which aims to recognise and valorise vintage cabinets as testimony to the technological, industrial and cultural history of entertainment. In his view, reaching that goal requires that historic machines not be automatically subjected to constraints designed for slot machines and other forms of cash-prize gambling, since preserving arcade cabinets involves specific needs for restoration, display and use in cultural, museum and recreational settings. He concluded by asking the bill's promoters to keep paragraph 7 outside the rules of paragraph 6 because they are different games, and not to repeat the same error.