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Football Manager 2013 – that’s last year’s game – has been illegally downloaded by 10.1 million people, Sports Interactive studio boss Miles Jacobson revealed at the London Games Conference 2013 yesterday.
As reported by MCV, Jacobson said the game was cracked on May 12 this year, but a flaw allowed Sports Interactive to track the IP addresses of everybody who downloaded and played the illegal version.
The stats showed that China was the biggest offender, accounting for a huge 3.2 million of the downloads. Turkey followed with 1.05 million and Portugal with 781,785. Italy too was high up on the list with 547,000 downloads, one of which actually came from within the Vatican.
Jacobson is, however, realistic about what this all means for the game’s lost sales, stating it would be “ridiculous to think” the studio and SEGA lost out on 10.1 million sales. A more accurate figure is estimated to be around 176,000, equating to $3.7 million in revenue.
And it’s a situation unlikely to change too much in the future, says Jacobson.
“Crackers are going to crack and people will download,” he explained, but hopes that by publicly releasing the statistics it will raise awareness of the true state of illegal game downloading.
Source: MCV
