Buy ChampMan 2010 for only £2.51

By Robert Purchese Published 18 August, 2009

"Pay What You Want," says Eidos.

Eidos is offering you the chance to buy the latest Championship Manager game for as little at 1p and a £2.50 transaction fee.

The promotion runs from 9am today until midnight on 10th September. You must register on the ChampMan website to make use of the offer, which only applies to digital downloads.

Championship Manager 2010 will be available to download from 11th September, at which point the game's price will rise to £29.99.

"This is the first time an initiative like this has ever been tried in the videogames market," said CM2010 boss Roy Meredith, no doubt aware of the pioneering Radiohead In Rainbows album sale.

"This is the best Championship Manager the studio has ever made and we want as many people as possible to try the full new game as once they try it we're convinced they will come back again and again."

Our recent hands-on impressions of Championship Manager 2010 has all the nitty gritty details.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (25) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Eraysor #1 3 years ago

    ...I am a little confused, but you can hardly argue at that price.

  • northernlights #2 3 years ago

    I think they mean you can buy it for £2.51 till September 10. On the 11th you will be able to download not till then. If you buy it after 11 Sept it will be £29.99.

    Will there be a Mac version ???

  • Lankysi #3 3 years ago

    You can't seem to get it at the moment! May have to wait a while for the store to become available.

    You have to head to http://www.champmanstor e.com to purchase it but it asks for a username and password. The one I registered with on the site doesn't work :(

    Lets hope this isn't just a big PR stunt to generate website traffic!!!

    EDIT - Ok, ignore me, turns out the link on their page was wrong! Its http://www.champmanst ore.co.uk not .com!!
    Edited by 1 at 18/08/09 @ 09:27

  • Mkwone #4 3 years ago

    CM know they've lost fans to FM. it doesn't matter how good the game is most people have written it off. By making it £2.51 (cheaper than most decent Iphone games) people are going to download it on a whim. Cm are banking on people liking the game and coming back to the series. Loose money know and hope to gain it in the long run.

    It's worked on me, i've played the demo but wasn't going to get the full game at £25, but at a tenth of the price it's a certainty.

  • RexRunti #5 3 years ago

    Be interesting to see if this has any effect on how popular the game becomes on torrent sites.

  • Hantheman #6 3 years ago

    Basically means. "We're not as good at making games as Sports Interactive, and CM10 won't match FM10 so we'll just give it away"

  • stueyg87 #7 3 years ago

    after trying the demo i think this game is priced at £2.51 too much. absolute garbage

  • tripitaka #8 3 years ago

    I hope some people pay more than 2.51 for this...

  • Shadders #9 3 years ago

    If people would like to see more of this in future from other developers, then I suggest that we offer Eidos slightly more than a penny, I will be downloading it, I think I'll give them a tenner, which is probably what I'd be willing to pay at retail (it's not a game I'd usually buy).

  • chrisno21 #10 3 years ago

    My interest was zero, now its about two-fitty

  • Prox #11 3 years ago

    How does this compare to Football Manager? Is FM significantly better i.e. £20 better?

  • JammyPez #12 3 years ago

    Bought!

    It's a good plan, those who'd not normally bother will purchase at that price - so you guarantee additional sales for no cost.

    Additionally many will wait for the boxed version regardless, so the impact on actual sales may not be as great as many believe - this is certainly a boost to sales and distribution of the game rather than a cut in sales and revenue.

  • tobs #13 3 years ago

    Yeah, fair play to them, I will pay them a tenner for this... brave move and a good way to win back players.

  • tobs #14 3 years ago

    hmmm... :(

    "Property "CWebUser.email" is not defined.
    An internal error occurred while the Web server was processing your request. Please contact the webmaster to report this problem. "

  • Bazfrag #15 3 years ago

    @Prox. Short answer: Yes. Long answer: yeeesss! Judging from previous versions. Cm is lacking a lot of Fm depth but may be more accessible.
    Edited by 1 at 18/08/09 @ 11:47

  • Gebadire #16 3 years ago

    10:30 am - Demo installed
    10:35 am - Demo uninstalled

    Just because it only costs £2.50 doesn't suddenly make it good.

    Still a mile away from beating Football Manager...

  • kestral #17 3 years ago

    I'm happy to play it for a tenner - maybe more depending on the quality of a demo. I think it's a fantastic ideato find out what people want to pay for a game, I think an optimal price for video games would be between £19 and £24 for title that I'm definately interested in - not too far off current deals. (perhaps £10-15 for an game i'm a little bit interested in - like this one).

    If they find people want to pay considerably less on average they can see how much game they can make for that price (somewhere between a traditional champman and an iphone version) so that they still make a profit! Good all round.

    Perhaps the average price will be lower though because people will buy it that wouldn't have otherwise. Nice one!
    Edited by 5 at 18/08/09 @ 12:28

  • kestral #18 3 years ago

    Championship Manager 2010 will also feature CM Season Live, also available to order through the Champ Man store, which is updated every month with real player data and information for the 2009/10 football season.

    CM Season Live is additional downloadable content, available at just £5 for 6 updates, including all the latest statistics, scores, competition standings, player transfers, player stats, bookings and major injuries plus much more from the 10 leading countries in Europe and can be downloaded directly to the game throughout the season.

    source:[link url=http:/ /www.championshipmanager.co.uk/server/show/ConWebDoc.1088?PH PSESSID=3625613ae4eadd4b9402267cac07efe8
    ]http://ww w.championshipmanager.co.uk/ser...[/link]

    First update is free however:
    With just a few days to go until demo release, we thought now would be a good time to inform you of a free data update we'll be offering for download on the day of release. [link url=http:/ /www.championshipmanager.co.uk/server/show/ConWebDoc.1051?PH PSESSID=3625613ae4eadd4b9402267cac07efe8
    ]http://ww w.championshipmanager.co.uk/ser...[/link]
    Edited by 2 at 18/08/09 @ 12:21

  • Rubarack #19 3 years ago

    It's a very interesting idea, but I have to say an odd place to try it. It's not a brand many people can really have much affinity for, after the pretty shameful idea they had of buying the brand, but none of the assets from the original creators. I just don't see a lot of people paying more than £2.51. Hopefully it will get something less than a 90% piracy rate though.

  • frycrayola #20 3 years ago

    I don't think it was Eidos' idea to buy the CM brand and not the assets. SI started independent and I believe always wanted to have a hold of their assets. They helped build a massive CM brand and then eventually decided their future laid away from Eidos.

    Eidos were left holding the CM brand. At that point, it'd be foolish to chuck it all away.

  • ademkermad #21 3 years ago

    If they're practically giving the game away, then that doesn't that suggest that their game isn't very good? Maybe they're just trying to make the CM brand more popular, because it was funny to see how quickly people switched to FM once SI left.

    To be honest, if FM is better, then I'd rather pay £25 for that than get a game for £2.50 that I'll never play. Video games for me have never been about price... when I'm comparing two games, I'm not looking at which one is cheaper, rather which one interests me the most.

  • skillian #22 3 years ago

    If they're practically giving the game away, then that doesn't that suggest that their game isn't very good?

    Well Radiohead did the same thing, does that mean Radiohead aren't very good?

    But honestly, I think you are right - they are up against a game (FM) that almost everyone says does everything better than this - they certainly need to give people a reason to buy.

  • MrChuckles #23 3 years ago

    Well, if the PC version is sold in a store for £30, Eidos probably get £6. If it sells online for £2.50, their online costs are probably nearer £1.00, so they make £1.50.

    Will they sell 4x the copies online this way compared to the store?

    Probably...

    And then for all those people who don't understand the internet, they'll buy it full price in the store anyway.

  • Daryoon #24 3 years ago

    Can I still massively edit the whole game with ease, allowing me to replace all the boring real-life bollocks with teams of celebrity chefs, defunct boy bands, Saturday night entertainers from the 80s and Popular Religious Figures?

    Few things are more entertaining than Postman Pat taking down Darth Vader with a crunching tackle, or God being sacked as a team manager and scrounging for work in the conference leagues.

  • polymorp #25 3 years ago

    Might as well give it a go for a few quid. Well 49p anyhow.
    It seems a bold move and if they end up getting extra sales and some good PR/word of mouth it should be worth it.

    Something of a little is better than all of nothing