By tracking downloads of the illegal (pirated) version of FM, SI found out that even someone from the smallest country in the world, Vatican, there is someone who plays FM regular.
Unbelievable news has been released by Miles Jacobson director of Sports Interactive and Football Manager game series. Pirated version downloaded even in Vatican!
By tracking downloads of the illegal (pirated) version of FM, SI found out that even someone from the smallest country in the world, Vatican, there is someone who plays FM regular.They don’t know the IP address yet, but further investigation will for sure take place.
After this discovery has been released, lot’s of FM players have asked themselves the same; ‘Could it be that the Pope is playing Football Manager?’.
Other numbers show us that the largest number of illegal copies were downloaded in China (3.2m), with Turkey (1.03m) and Portugal (781,785) next in the list.
Italy was also a hotboted for PC piracy, with 547,000 in the country (plus one in Vatican). 10.1m people have illegally downloaded Football Manager 2013 in total around the world.
Jacobson said that he does not believe that one pirated game equals one lost sale "That would be ridiculous to think," he said. But based on the drop in activations, he estimated piracy cost them 176,000 lost sales.
He added that 1.74 per cent of illegal downloaders would potentially purchase the game had no crack been available, which would have meant $3.7m in revenue. Revenue he would have spent hiring new members to the team.
Also, 18 per cent of people who downloaded illegally played the games five times or more, so that's around 1.8m gamers regularly playing a game they did not pay for.
Jacobson admitted that there was little that can be done about this piracy "crackers are going to crack and people will download". But hopes this data will help publishers and developers understand the true state of illegal downloading in the world.
