Eastside Hockey shut down

By Tom Bramwell Published 30 January, 2007

SI blames piracy for slow sales.

Sports Interactive says it has been forced to abandon its Eastside Hockey Manager series due to mounting piracy.

That's according to managing director Miles Jacobson, who explained the situation in a forum post this afternoon as the developer posted the game's final patch.

Despite strong reviews, SI discovered that sales simply weren't picking up, even in Scandinavia where the first game was strongest.

"The sales in Scandinavia, that had pretty much kept the game going, dropped heavily, from our analysis of the situation, mainly due to the game getting hacked before release, and pirated," Jacobson explained.

SI opted for digital distribution instead of a boxed release, but the expected sales didn't pick up. "The forums were full of people constructively criticising, and praising (just the way we like it) and we were all pretty buoyant.

"We had more licences than any other hockey game in history, it was the best Hockey management game in the history of gaming ever, and Riz and his team had done an amazing job. So, despite Hockey being a bit less popular post the hiatus of the sport in the US in 2004, we still couldn't fail, right?

"Wrong. The orders came in a drizzle, rather than a flood. We scratched our heads trying to work out what had gone wrong. And then someone pointed out that the game was being pirated, and was available as a torrent from lots of different pirating sites. Then we sat there and watched as the claimed amount of downloads on those sites went up and up, as sales stayed static.

"Basically, the game did not bring in enough money to cover the development costs, let alone the license fees on top of that. So we've had to make the decision to stop development on the game for now - it doesn't mean that it'll never come back, but for the foreseeable future, there will not be another version of Eastside Hockey Manager."

There is an upside though, as Jacobson adds that all of the people working on the Eastside series have relocated to other projects within the company.

"Thank you to all of you out there who supported the Eastside Hockey Manager project by buying the game, and especially those who helped with testing and research.

"And to those of you who pirated it, this is what happens when you steal. There are no excuses you can give that are valid for stealing - you have lead to the demise of a game that you enjoyed playing," Jacobson concluded.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (70) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • ecureuil #1 5 years ago

    I've never heard of this game..

  • stuarty_2003 #2 5 years ago

    "And to those of you who pirated it, this is what happens when you steal. There are no excuses you can give that are valid for stealing - you have lead to the demise of a game that you enjoyed playing," Jacobson concluded.

    Probably the best way to describe it.

    EDIT: @rotj - FM is by and large the biggest selling management sim of the most popular sport. It's week one sales cover the development costs alone I'm guessing.
    Edited by stuarty_2003 at 30/01/07 @ 16:19

  • Eldritch #3 5 years ago

    Good point, rotj.

    It's always easier to blame piracy than oneself.

    As far as I know, almost every game is cracked and distributed as warez anyway.

  • peterfll #4 5 years ago

    \Points to the HUGE market for Ice Hockey Management simulations that are exclusive to the PC and bemoans them all for being sodding pirates.

  • marc_si #5 5 years ago

    "As far as I know, almost every game is cracked and distributed as warez anyway. "

    Does this make it right that this is the case? ... stealing is stealing imho.

    FM survives being pirated* however games with a smaller user base simply can't sustain their development if they are distributed as warez ... thus a lot of potentially great games either go unmade (because publishers are less willing to take chances) or simply don't get the chance to evolve (because they're less likely to be profitable and thus sustainable).

    *If it wasn't pirated then we'd have a much larger development team able to work upon it and would be able to afford having more licences etc. within the game .... piracy affects ALL game development.

  • Eldritch #6 5 years ago

    @peterfll

    Good point! The Games Company only just released a German hockey manager. To lose money? No.

  • jellyhead #7 5 years ago

    / wonders why any PC games sell at all as all of them are pirated and available
    I'm not saying that in this limited market piracy didn't have an impact though but by the same token i'd never heard of it either.

  • varsas #8 5 years ago

    A Football management games has a far, far larger market than an Ice Hockey management game. Therefore even if FM is pirated there is a large enough market to sustain it; imagine the sales of FM if there was no piracy!

  • Eldritch #9 5 years ago

    @marc_si: No, pirates are still wankers (and criminals).

  • Xerx3s #10 5 years ago

    Never heard of it.

  • Miles_SI #11 5 years ago

    Rotj - FM gets hit massively by piracy. But it's also a much more established game, and sells a lot more copies, which keeps it going. So the difference is that whilst our stats show 6:1 pirate vs legit copies of FM, the 1 covers the dev costs. Whereas with EHM, the 10:1 ratio, with both the 10 and the 1 being smaller, meant that it didn't, despite the smaller team size, as Hockey games sell less than Football games.

    Thanks to EG for running a story on this - it's not something we've press released, so good to see the word spreading.

  • varsas #12 5 years ago

    I guess those that have not heard of it never play FM? Assuming you did play FM on PC then you would have visited the SI website and there are ESH banners there...

  • Miles_SI #13 5 years ago

    Oh, and to those saying "haven't heard of it", there is a half season demo of EHM2007 on our website. According to metacritic (http://www.metacritic.com/games/platform... it averaged 89% in review scores, and got just as good, if not better, scores from many sports publications in countries where Hockey is popular.

  • Have_to_Speak_Up #14 5 years ago

    I'm sure I remember hearing stories somewhere of a game where the stats of players began to subtly deteriorate on a pirated copy. Was that Championship manager?

  • Eldritch #15 5 years ago

    @Miles_SI: Why do you think does TGC release an all-new hockey manager just for the German market, where you easily have 15 warez copies per 1 legal copy? I'm just curious.

  • Blerk #16 5 years ago

    our stats show 6:1 pirate vs legit copies of FM

    Ooof! That must really hurt. :-(

    Are we allowed to link Lazy Town in the comments as well as the forum? :-)

  • DaveyJ666 #17 5 years ago

    Ohhhhhhhh aarrrrrggghhhhhhhh pirates....!! Do you think Captian Birdseye is a pirate? I think he's probably a pedo, after all he hangs around with kids all day, on an island....bloddy kiddie fiddler!
    Edited by DaveyJ666 at 30/01/07 @ 16:40

  • Miles_SI #18 5 years ago

    Eldritch - The German market is a very interesting one, and like a very different style of management game to the rest of Europe / the world, normally involving being more of a "chairman" than the "head coach" route our games go. For case in point, see Fifa Manager, or Fussball Manager in Germany, which does massively well in Germany, but not that great anywhere else.

    Wired_protocol - what I wrote on our forums is fact. It's the situation that is pathetic - if those that had pirated the game had bought it, the game would still be in development. We provide nice long demo's of our games, so if they just wanted to try it out, they could have done, but instead, decided to steal it.

  • the_dudefather #19 5 years ago

    this seems more like viking pillaging and raping rather than piracy

    yar har!

  • marc_si #20 5 years ago

    "All games get pirated, It doesn't make it right, but to use that as an excuse for one individual game's lack of sales is pathetic. There are Many games that have a small target market, that get pirated all to hell and still do okay. "

    So when proof has been seen of a sales to warez ratio which is high it should be ignored and not commented upon by a developer?

    IMHO its worth bringing it to the fore and reminding people that their decisions have an effect on game development and that if they don't support products (which ever company creates them) then they simply might not be there for them to play in the future ...

  • Eldritch #21 5 years ago

    Heimspiel Eishockey Manager 2007

    [link url=http://www.sigames.com/softography.php?type=view&id=14#screenshots
    ]Eastside Hockey Manager[/link]

    Uhm ...

  • DaveyJ666 #22 5 years ago

    I've noticed on ebay, that most of the GBA games are pirated, I bought a copy of The Legend of Zelda for the GBA, a few years back and it was pirated, wasn't too amused, so I reported the guy to ebay, Nintendo and the cops, never heard back what happened though and I still got the crappy game floating about somewhere!

  • Miles_SI #23 5 years ago

    Blerk - that Lazytown "Cake" song is the most annoying thing I've ever had to sit through.

    DaveyJ - no, Captain Birdseye is a chef who makes damn fine fish fingers. Not a fan of his ready meals though.

  • playgen #24 5 years ago

    @DaveyJ666

    ebay doesnt give a toss about pirate games on ebay, as long as they get their fees for the auctions the greedy gits.
    The majority of gba games on ebay are fakes, or at least were the last time i looked. Infact it was so difficult to find genuine gba games on ebay i stopped bothering to try and buy them from there.

  • Dynamize #25 5 years ago

    All games get pirated, It doesn't make it right, but to use that as an excuse for one individual game's lack of sales is pathetic. There are Many games that have a small target market, that get pirated all to hell and still do okay.

    pathetic.

    Lost sales due to, y'know, *theft* is just an "excuse" now?
    Christ.
    Edited by Dynamize at 30/01/07 @ 17:06

  • DaveyJ666 #26 5 years ago

    I've been lookin to get a new copy of Zelda Minish Cap for the GBA, any ideas where I could pic one up?

  • OhWiseOne #27 5 years ago

    Good to see Miles and Marc on here dishing out some reality cakes.

    Piracy is a crime, a sad day for the team that worked their nuts off on the title.

    I doubt anyone of this pathetic forum has ever seen several years work wiped out by piracy, I can tell you, it's depressing as hell.

  • Der_tolle_Emil #28 5 years ago

    I also never heard of this game. I most certainly believe that piracy heavily affects the revenue of a game but to be honest I doubt that it completely ruins a company or at least a games series. 99% of all games get pirated and spread even before their release and never has this affected game sales so much that someone had to shut down a series or even close a development studio. It is definetly not right to download a game and noone should ignore the fact that games get pirated but I really don't believe that it has such an enormous impact like many developers say it has.

    I don't want to say it's the developer's fault, not at all. But given the fact I never heard of this game before says at least a tiny bit. I cannot even remember that I saw it in the stores somewhere. (Someone mentioned it was downloadable, maybe that's why; Don't know if it was exclusively only available online). And as someone already mentioned simulation/strategy games have a huge fanbase in Germany or say the German speaking countries (I live in Austria to be exactly). Quite frankly though Ice Hockey is not a very popular sport here. It's football all the way of course and a few other sports but hockey in general don't have that much of a crowd. And that is probably not a good thing to start with. Look at "Die Siedler"/"The Settlers". The game sells like crazy in Germany and parts of Europe yet a few titles never got published in the US. It simply does not sell over there. In the end we have a limited fanbase for such games in the first place and on top of that a sport that is not everyone's type. And of course piracy does not help this at all. Given the facts it might have a bigger impact than with other games that would normally sell great worldwide but still; I doubt it's the only reason and yes, blaming piracy only (it seems that way) comes of a bit weird because people know EVERYTHING gets pirated these games, so why exactly does it make a difference here? Gives the impression the developer is just looking for an excuse.

    Again, I don't envy developers struggling with piracy. I cannot speak for myself but I guess the game has a fellow fanbase and it's sad there won't be a sequel for those wanting one. But from my point of view everything points out to a game that had to struggle with a lot more than just piracy, sorry.

  • playgen #29 5 years ago

    Of course big selling games sell despite being pirated, but big selling games are often sequels, and clones and dont hold many suprises. Innovative games with unique gameplay can get completely destroyed by piracy.
    And because developers have to factor in the lost money from piracy they cant spend as long developing and improving their games. If there was no piracy games could be even better!
    Edited by playgen at 30/01/07 @ 17:12

  • Eldritch #30 5 years ago

    I've seen two of my former employers go down in flames, thank you, but, to me, blaming "piracy" is just too simple an answer.

    Maybe your product didn't reach its audience? Maybe it didn't appeal to buying customers? Maybe your forecasts were wrong? If your forecasts didn't account for piracy, well ...

  • jellyhead #31 5 years ago

    I know you guys at SI are passionate about the games you do release and i am sorry that you had to make this choice.

  • Eldritch #32 5 years ago

    Right on, Emil. I was actually with Blue Byte, when they made "The Settlers III" and "The Settlers IV". Those were the days. *sigh*

  • strangeed #33 5 years ago

    Sorry to hear about the problem. The problem of IP protection is going to haunt us for a long time, though I have to admit I am not always on the side of the lawyers and copyright holders. Ideally a different kind of IP model would be created. I doubt it would ever happen though.

    It's a difficult debate. I've been following parts of it on the European Level.

  • TheMoonRat #34 5 years ago

    Emil: the fact is, it is a minority sport, and SI Games knew that. But the fact that they there was a 10:1 piracy to bought copy rate shows that they WERE reaching their audience in letting them know the game existed. Their advertising _had_ worked, people who needed to know about the game _did_ know about it!

    If your saying that its their fault for targeting a more niche sector, well god help us all. THATs the reason why we have so many sequels and such lack of innovation at times. Only mass market games should be made should they, to account for piracy? Fun.

    TBH this Ice hockey game didn't interest me in the slightest; but it sure interested enough people to go and pirate the game! The fact that so many of you seem angry at SI Games and blaming them for the game having to be closed shows what a sad state of affairs the mentality of pc gamers is in.

  • Eldritch #35 5 years ago

    All I'm saying is: Take piracy into account when you make your business plans for a project. If you're going to make a niche title, fine, but make sure you know what your intended customers want.

    Personally, I'd be the perfect buyer of a hockey manager: I like games, I have a personalised Vancouver Canucks jersey in my cupboard, I follow the NHL.

    So, why didn't your product reach me? Not because I pirated it myself or got a pirated copy from some mate around the corner. It just didn't appeal to me. I didn't like the simple presentation. I'd be glad to cough up 50 Euros for a nice hockey manager for Xbox 360 or PSP, but there isn't any, not by SI or any other company. So ...

    You see, there you have a potential buyer who didn't succumb to piracy's charms and still didn't buy your game.

  • Der_tolle_Emil #36 5 years ago

    If your saying that its their fault for targeting a more niche sector, well god help us all. THATs the reason why we have so many sequels and such lack of innovation at times. Only mass market games should be made should they, to account for piracy? Fun.

    In a way. I don't want to put it like it was their fault but it's argueably not the best point to start with. I am totally aware of the fact that piracy plays a much bigger role with games that target a niche sector and believe me I don't want sequel after sequel just because a developer knows it will sell. Viva Pinata may be not the best example because the 360 does not suffer as much from piracy as a PC does but I definetly don't want such games to disappear.

    There is no sweet talking in what happened but this is the first report I read of a game serious to go dead because of piracy. BlueByte is a good example, so is JoeWood. BlueByte have a very, very strong IP going with Settlers but JoWood is not exactly a big developer either. Their games also are not the ones you will see in "Top 50 games of the year" lists but they still manage to keep running. They are facing a lot of trouble and they admit that but I never heard them say anything like "Piracy is the reason we don't sell games". It's a different approach. "We had a different task to accomplish, we knew our game will not sell millions in the first place and sadly piracy also reduced sales beyond a limit we could afford in the long run" just sounds different to "We had a great game, everyone loved it, especially Scandinavia, then suddenly within one year everyone pirated our game and we did not sell". It's not believeable.

    Put it how you want to, I agree it should not matter how you put it. A developer struggling so much with piracy is a bad thing and nothing else but I still don't get it why this game is so much different to any other games. Look at Nadeo and TrackMania. Not really a mass market game and definetly victim of piracy too. And they also sell the game at budget prices (at least the original and sunrise) while the Sunrise Extreme expansion was completely free. Where does their money come from? I don't want to defend piracy at all saying it does not matter. It does. But not to that degree.

    Edit: Fedor: I live in Austria, not the UK. And yes, I am an ice hockey fan. Like Eldritch said, I am a fan and never heard of this game yet I know countless sequels to other hockey games? Besides, noone claimed hockey is an inferior sport. It's just not very wide spread. In Austria for example, how could it? National television has approximately 5 mintes per week for hockey. No wonder noone is interested in the sport. It's a common problem with many sports and yes it's a shame because I really enjoy watching a hockey game. (And also American football).
    Edited by Der_tolle_Emil at 30/01/07 @ 18:00

  • Eldritch #37 5 years ago

    "UK is a fucking disgrace to the rest of Europe."

    No, statements like that are a disgrace to this forum.

  • secombe #38 5 years ago

    Yawn, everyone is overlooking the key facts here to argue/discuss the point of a specific game...that's NOT THE POINT! Miles_SI has put it in black and white for us...

    "Whereas with EHM, the 10:1 ratio, with both the 10 and the 1 being smaller"

    They were reaching their market, and I have no idea why people are going on about a niche game, that sort of thing keeps gaming interesting imo, unless you all want to play "Generic Racer Part 27" for the rest of your gaming lives.

    Piracy is a huge problem, specifically for niche games that are not able to 'gloss over' the piracy factor by shifting so many units. People seem reluctant to discuss it, I wonder why.



  • secombe #39 5 years ago

    "but I still don't get it why this game is so much different to any other games. Look at Nadeo and TrackMania"

    Trackmania is a poor example, looking at Play.com for example (one of the biggest PC games providers in the UK), the games various versions has often broken into the top 10 iirc. I imagine it does pretty nicely for its developer/publisher.

  • Avenger1324 #40 5 years ago

    "if those that had pirated the game had bought it, the game would still be in development. We provide nice long demo's of our games, so if they just wanted to try it out, they could have done, but instead, decided to steal it. "

    Yes piracy is bad and it harms the industry, but you cannot assume that without piracy all those people that downloaded it for free would have bought it. As soon as something is free, far more people will want it than if they had to pay anything for it.

    The demo is available from your website, but to people using torrents or other download means - they could spend just a little more time downloading it and get the whole thing.

    @Fedor
    Ice hockey may be much better than soccer - but only the Americans play soccer. People in the UK play football :-P

  • Steve007 #41 5 years ago

    The last two years I've bought Football Manager only for the game to stop working shortly afterwards. According to SI it's due to piracy applications on my PC. I only have a legitimate copy of Nero!

    SI's policy has ensured I'll never give them another penny again and I won't go into the state their games are released in. Does this mickey mouse company really expect us to wait a few months for a patch to be made available each year in order to make the game playable?

    I hope they go under as their attitude stinks. I have two £30 coasters here - thanks a bunch!

    I really hope someone from SI reads this.

    As for the hockey game failing - good! I hope you lose a fortune.

  • Pirotic #42 5 years ago

    Wasn't this game free to begin with and then they bought out the original bedroom developers who made it? :p I swear I read a news story ages ago about how a very successful shareware ice-hockey game got taken over, and how many ice-hockey games can you get :p
    Edited by Pirotic at 30/01/07 @ 19:16

  • toy_brain #43 5 years ago

    Why is it that every time the issue of piracy comes up, people rush to try and brush its impact under the carpet and instead try and find some other nonsensical thing to blame?
    Miles_SI spelled the facts out pretty damn clearly, but still people are trying to dream up other 'excuses' for the game not selling.

    My guess is that a lot of you are among the guilty yourselfs. Mabye not this game, but probably a whole load of others.

  • Miles_SI #44 5 years ago

    Steve007 - sorry to hear of your problems. We use the same copy protection system as many other companies, so if you're having problems with our games that hundreds of thousands of other customers aren't having, it's worth getting in touch with Macrovision.

    For the record, I play all of our games fine, and I too have Nero installed on my machine, so I'd suggest it's something else wrong on your system.

    But hey - feel free to wish our families suffering by none of us having jobs anymore because of a technical issue with your computer configuration. Nice touch!

    Oh, and so that we don't get into trouble with Disney's lawyers, it is they who are the Mickey Mouse company, not us, although it's only a small part of what they do.

    Pirotic - that's partly true. Riz released the original game as freeware, yes, but we didn't buy his company, we offered him a job and a team so that he could try and make the game a profession, rather than a hobby. He's a very very talented coder, and we're delighted that he's decided to stay and work on Football Manager.

  • Eldritch #45 5 years ago

    "My guess is that a lot of you are among the guilty yourselfs. Mabye not this game, but probably a whole load of others."

    How self-righteous and arrogant can you get?

    "But hey - feel free to wish our families suffering by none of us having jobs anymore because of a technical issue with your computer configuration. Nice touch!"

    I thought the article says:

    "There is an upside though, as Jacobson adds that all of the people working on the Eastside series have relocated to other projects within the company."

    Huh?

    /coat

  • Der_tolle_Emil #46 5 years ago

    But hey - feel free to wish our families suffering by none of us having jobs anymore because of a technical issue with your computer configuration. Nice touch!

    I get it you are frustrated. But sorry, if you sell me a product that does not work, why should I care if you lose your job? As brutal as it sounds, I don't buy defective products twice. I know that there are lots of problems with copy protection and developer's are not at fault here because they don't develop the protection. Still developer's are in a way responsible because they chose (or do the publishers?) to use that copy protection. If you chose to use the technology with your products you also take a huge responsibility ensuring it works. You cannot point with your finger at Macrovision and say "It was them!" because this is no use at all for the customer who cannot play the game. Of course a customer thinks "You obviously chose software that does not work, I want it to work, I don't care who's to blame". 50€ down the drain because of this.

    I really don't want to offend anyone and sound harsh but you have to understand people who don't buy products because they got disappointed before. I know it sounds heartless but for someone who has no interest in the technical aspect and just wants to play there is no meaning to what is causing the problems. Your company name is on the disc, and that matters.

    Besides, and this is an entirely different discussion, copy protections are a hassle, nothing more. Games get cracked and release before they are on the shelves; This happens nearly every time, so what good does copy protection really do? It causes problems with certain installations, it sucks up a lot of money for licensing and that's it. Cracks are so easily available, even for people who have no idea about copy protection. Did Galactic Civilizations II not launch without any copy protection at all? Wasn't it in the 10 best selling games for a few weeks? Copy protection nowadays is useless. It's a total waste of money. I totally understand people pirating games just to make them work. I personally crack my legally bought games too because I don't want to uninstall Daemon Tools. I don't want to uninstall my debugger. I use these tools legally and just because most of the people use such things for piracy I have to put up with countless checks and nagscreens because of that? No thanks. I happily buy the game, crack it and that's it. *

    Btw, sorry if this is a double post, my post won't show up even after a refresh.

    Edit: * Luckily developers are realizing this too, at least some. I will mention BlueByte again who thankfully chose not to use StarForce for Settlers II: The Next Generation. They still use copy protection but I think they very well knew that dropping StarForce and switching to a much easier crackable protection may increase piracy. But seeing it this way it seems that customer satisfaction (for upcoming games quite important) and the few more sales because of StarForce refusers now buying was worth taking this into account.
    Edited by Der_tolle_Emil at 30/01/07 @ 21:41

  • toy_brain #47 5 years ago

    "How self-righteous and arrogant can you get?"

    I assume you are being ironic on purpose.
    Right?

  • Neil_SI Verified Producer, Sports Interactive #48 5 years ago

    Retailers are extremely unlikely to stock games without any form of copy protection.

  • Der_tolle_Emil #49 5 years ago

    You mean retailers except Walmart, Best Buy, EB and Gamestop? Not that they are big retailers or anything...

    I'm going to bed now.

  • Pirotic #50 5 years ago

    Woot, Thanks for the clarification - I was worried I'd gone mad and dreamt that whole news story up. Good to her the old Eastside Hockey coder is still working with you as I guess this news has probably hit him the hardest seeing it was his labour of love for so many years.

    One question if I may, If you know that your games have a 10:1 piracy ratio, why on earth do you still bother with Macrovision? All it takes is one person to rip the CD, one single person, and volla - it's all over the internet. It seems silly that you would stop even a very small minority of your honest customers from playing the game by using macrovision, which has always been extremely hit and miss. I've had to resort to downloading 'NO CD cracks' for games I own, simply because Macrovision didn't like something on my system (be it Nero Smartstart, Daemon Tools etc). At least look into it, because keeping that 10% happy should be far more important than trying to make things a tiny bit more difficult for the 90% who do pirate.

  • Steve007 #51 5 years ago

    Miles_SI, sorry mate, but your company has sold me products that don't work! I have very little on my two laptops - Nero, MS Office, Yahoo & MSN Messenger, a few Google applications, Nokia & Sony Ericsson PC Suites & Paintshop Pro. There's nothing that can possibly be on the 'naughty' list of applications out of that lot!

    My brother also has the same problems with FM 2007 and he's got even less on his laptop than I do!

    Your company is mickey mouse if you sell stuff that doesn't work. What's more no one appears to give a toss about it and it all gets conveniently swept under the carpet.

    My brother and I have spent around £90 on your games and we've probably had less than 15-20 hours playtime between us. Value for money? Is it bollocks.

    The 360 may have its faults but at least Microsoft doesn't turn my games into expensive coasters.

  • wolfen #52 5 years ago

    I've heard rumours that SI considered to drop the portuguese localization last year because of rampant piracy, and might axe it this time around. It is the most played football game around here no doubts about that, but some buy the English version from Amazon (which usually retails with a large discount) to avoid the rip-off high-street prices and most simply download the game from a torrent site. When IRC was still all the rage (before MSN kicked in with the general public with 6 and "social networking" websites popped up), most channels had an official tournament every six months, or even less. I know that some people only downloaded the game to take part in those tournaments. Most pirated game in our shores? Very likely.
    I remember trying the demo of one the versions, and was interested, but not beyond that. The level of detail the game includes rules out pretty much anyone who watches and enjoys matches, but doesn't have the general and tactical knowledge acquired from years of experience, like what happens to most of us with football. Ask a canuck who watches a couple of footy matches a month to play FM and they'll probably feel the same.

    And like Miles_SI said, don't compare the German market to the rest. Their managing games have evolved from the Kron, Software 2000 and Ascaron Amiga and DOS games, and are all heavily focused on financial micro-management. They are also much less fiddly and whiny about licenses.
    And Gerald Köhler is a God.

  • Miles_SI #53 5 years ago

    Eldritch - the comment made by me that you have quoted was directed at Steve007 based on his post about something entirely different to this discussion. Apologies if that wasn't clearer.

    Der_tolle_Emil - the product didn't work on his configuration on his machine. It works for the vast majority of consumers. I advised him to talk to Macrovision, as I can't troubleshoot the area of his PC that is a problem with their software and his PC. He has Nero, I have Nero. The game works on my machine, it doesn't on his. Wishing pain on people because your computer equipment doesn't work isn't really fair - and if he went to our forums, the tech support people would attempt to help him (as long as he asked politely). If he doesn't want to buy our products again, that is up to him - what I was, and am, unhappy with, is him attacking us unjustly on a forum topic about a different game.

    I don't understand why you are giving props to Blue Byte for not using Starforce. We don't use Starforce either.

    And in response to your other post, Neil will have been referring to UK and European retailers. Our games aren't available in any of the retailers you listed so, again, a moot point.

    Pirotic - we've used various different copy protection systems in the past. The Marcrovision one is on FM2007. EHM used different systems if I recall correctly - 3 different ones for different versions, actually. Once something is cracked, it's cracked, but the longer it takes, the better it is.

  • kallistus #54 5 years ago

    See also: Paradox/Strategy First’s Europa Universalis and Hearts of Iron. No copy protection there either. Yet they are a producer of niche games that seem to survive without it.

    As for the credulous acceptance of the 10:1 figure, such sales loss figures produced by the industry must always be taken with a grain of salt. RIAA for example, seems to pull much of their piracy figures out of their posterior. The numbers given here contain the assumption that everyone who downloaded the product would actually have bought it if a pirated version hadn’t been available. The consumer only has ‘x’ amount of money to divert into efforts to make the rich richer. The amount of disposable income tends to get assigned based on perceptions of product value (i.e. Return on Investment). Remaining products, perceived as a less worthwhile investment, are the one that are most likely to be downloaded/borrowed off a mate, etc.

    A small sports management sim, with freeware origins, is naturally going to come further down the consumerist pecking order than some graphically flashy FPS or involved strategy game. The consumer wants both, only has disposable income for one option, and one of the options is an easy 330-odd meg download. A decision to make the latter purchase is, viewed coldly, irrational and likely to be made only by a fan of the sport. Solution: make damn sure you're marketing the product to the fan...

    The 10:1 is a ratio, not a sales volume figure. That is, you could sell one copy of a game and 10 people download it to produce this impressive figure. But that’s a failure of marketing, not a piracy issue. With no sales volume data, this ratio is meaningless.

    The 10:1 is not an indicator of appropriate market penetration. It is (theoretically) possible this ratio is so bad because the product was marketed so poorly that it primarily came to the attention of pirates and people that are not hockey fans. Once again, such a market segment is unlikely to use their limited disposable income on a small game that can be easily downloaded.

  • Miles_SI #55 5 years ago

    Kallistus - if someone can't afford 2 games, they should choose the one they want most, play it, and that's that. Same way as if I go into a cake shop, and I really want a doughnut and a mince pie, but I only have money for one, I can only buy one.

    I have never claimed that all of those 10 people would buy the game. I said that that is what the ratio of pirated copies to real copies was, according to what we saw with our own eyes.

    But none of those 10 people have any kind of excuse for pirating the game. None of them.

  • wolfen #56 5 years ago

    Well, that depends on the niche you are aiming for. Develop a game aiming for the mainstream/regular gamer starting in their mid-teens without copy protection and it will be pirated the hell up. HoI and EU are oriented to the wargamer niche, who are very focused on this genre and most of them are possibly more interested in the next obscure turn-based tabletop inspired wargame coded by two guys in a bedroom than with Supreme Commander or Tiberium Wars.

  • Sully #57 5 years ago

    kallistus - what profession (if any) do you currently hold? I'll be sure to want more than I can afford from your company and pop in and just take whatever I fancy...

    This is a sad day for small niche products imho. The fact that EHM couldn't survive even with SI's and SEGA's backing doesn't provide much proof that other niche markets such as cricket, rugby etc can be profitable.

  • tobs #58 5 years ago

    I played ice hockey and I have a game of (uni)hockey tomorrow. I live in the UK and I tried EHM and I just didn't enjoy it at all, not sure why.

    I play some 5-a-side soccer, but have never been to a match and support no-one in particular. I probably play FM more than anything else, and have since CM days.

    Piracy was rife in the 80's when I had my Spectrum, but it really grew in the 90's when publishers took the average game price from £9.99 to £29.99. Developement cost were nothing like today and the profits were huge for a while. Doesn't make it right, but it was a greedy decision by the publishers back then also. Now games piracy is part of the culture. However, movies and music are going the same way, so maybe it was inevitable.

    I tried FIFA manager demo this year, and it's really good, until you play the matches. Then it lacks a bit of soul. Not sure what my point is...

    Finally, Si are hard working guys and wish them the best of luck. Brave to try diversifying into other sports areas, kudos.

  • kallistus #59 5 years ago

    @Miles_SI: Along with World Peace(tm) that would be the ideal. Unfortunately we live on planet Earth, which is afflicted with this thing called Human Nature(tm). Tragically, Human Nature is highly resistant to idealist ranting from the mountain top. Thus, a business must instead come down and walk amongst the people, construct a viable product and marketing it properly rather than standing around screaming “oh noes!!1!! ofmg!!!111!! ffs u lam3r haX0r5!!!!!!111!!11!!” (insert equivalent business-speak dialogue if you want).

    The implication in those 10:1 figures was quite clear however.

    True. There are no excuses. Doesn’t change the fact that people will do what people have always done.

    @wolfen: As has been noted, copy protection gets broken like a twig, sometimes before games are even released. It is no impedance to pirates. It is a potential issue for legitimate customers. Thus, the mid-teens you refer to will download games with or without copy protection. Adding copy protection seems to be like a red rag to a bull as far as the crackers are concerned; the more the company adds, the more challenge/prestige they see in breaking it.

    There is the slightest possibility your characterisation of wargamers is flawed. ;) And this product should have been marketed the same way, to those very focused on this genre (i.e. sports/hockey fans).

    @Sully: Analyst. Which allows me to help with correcting your flawed analogy. The thrust of the argument was that poor quality products/poorly marketed products will fail. Thus, a superior analogy would be of walking into my shop, seeing my over-priced and shoddy products and then walking out to buy essentially the same product from the cheap knock-off merchant down the road (or in China – wherever you like). [If you need help with that, the crackers are represented by the knock-off merchants]

    That’s what people do. In the Real World.

    What I would do in response is to produce a product that the consumer is actually willing to buy. And there’s plenty of evidence to show that the consumer will pay for a desirable product. Notice how the music industry is still going strong, making a whole heap of money still? Notice how water is free from the tap, yet there are companies selling bottled water quite successfully? Notice how bookstores still exist despite the existence of these things called public libraries?

    Please excuse my cynicism but my experience with organisational failures such as this tends to result in management pointing the finger at everyone (workers, consumers, suppliers, etc), but themselves. Until we know what really went on behind the scenes with this adventure, it perhaps best to be a bit standoff-ish rather than mindlessly swallowing the official corporate line and standard excuses. I coud be wrong, but I have this feeling…

  • marc_si #60 5 years ago

    "@Sully: Analyst. Which allows me to help with correcting your flawed analogy. The thrust of the argument was that poor quality products/poorly marketed products will fail. Thus, a superior analogy would be of walking into my shop, seeing my over-priced and shoddy products and then walking out to buy essentially the same product from the cheap knock-off merchant down the road (or in China – wherever you like). [If you need help with that, the crackers are represented by the knock-off merchants] "

    I would have thought a more accurate analogy would have been for @Sully to see things he wants in your shop decide he wants them but doesn't want to pay for them ... then go and buy a brick (analogous to paying for an internet link) and then smashing a window with it so he can take them (breaking copy protection and downloading them) ...

    I am realistic - those people who are pirates will rationalise why they do it and explain to themselves that they wouldn't have bought the game anyway or that its not 'really' stealing ....

    What I do know is that a game friends of mine have slaved over* is no more, if anyone pirated it and enjoyed playing it then they are now in the situation that they won't have a new version of that game to steal and enjoy next year.

    If they'd purchased it then they might have - thats the point we're trying to put across simple as that, no great political bias, no real expectation of world peace coming about as a result of this thread.

    *Its fairly common knowledge that us developers can work crazy (60+ per week) hours - Graeme and Riz went above and beyond the normal insanity for EHM because they believed in and loved the game ...

  • mkreku #61 5 years ago

    But it still must have sold well in Scandinavia, right? It always does.. right?

  • varsas #62 5 years ago

    @Steve007: Since most people can run the FM games fine I think it's more likely your mickey mouse PCs that are the problem ;)

  • Steve007 #63 5 years ago

    Since when have IBM ThinkPad T series laptops been mickey mouse? My hardware is absolutely fine.

  • Pirotic #64 5 years ago

    I think that pretty much ends things, Kudos to SI for coming on the forum and defending themselves.

    A commercial game with freeware origins is always going to be difficult to sell, when you are used to getting something for free it can be a hard habbit to break. Also, looking at the comments, a lot of people didn't even know the game existed, even on the torrent sites where you claim it's been pirated extremely heavily I cannot find much, Just one single torrent which has been downloaded 1024 times. so thats probably what, 50-100 lost sales max, so I doubt the games failure can be completely blamed 'rampant piracy'.

    I think the statement was asking for trouble, trying to blame just piracy is bit of an easy way out. No doubt piracy didn't help matters and could of been the final nail in the coffin, but maybe if you wrote a balls simulator you could have also mentioned lack of PR on behalf of the publisher (sega?).
    Edited by Pirotic at 31/01/07 @ 09:59

  • felderpony #65 5 years ago

    Having read through all this and having once worked in the Games development industry in the dark and distant past.. Piracy is and always will be a problem to any development/publisher house no matter what size

    I hate to see all these excuses coming out about piracy. its just wrong. PERIOD!

    if there was less piracy, there'd be a lot less developers doing this. Heck I'd rather have a developer cull a game due to the fact it was poor quality, rather than piracy.

    We should be supporting good games by buying them, not ripping them off.

    just my two penneth. ;)

  • Steve007 #66 5 years ago

    What about when you buy legitimate games that don't work? I could just get a copy easily enough and I'm sure it would work just fine. Sad state of affairs really....

  • 4thVariety #67 5 years ago

    Shock, Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Testing, Acceptance.


    Clearly we are at stage two approaching stage three. Honestly, an icehockey manager. Even though Germans like manager games, icehockey is one of the least popular sports here. Sure, there is one pay TV channel desperately trying to say the opposite but I wouldn't know a single friend watching icehockey.

    Sure piracy can be a nail in the coffin, but it is not the only one. Why else would we need a site such as EG to rate games?

    Sorry to say but SI fooled themselves into believing that everybody like icehockey as much as they did and was subsequently ripped off by greedy licensing boards whos angle is not on promoting their sport but to cash in every cent possible.

  • silver-jon #68 5 years ago

    Without wanting to seem like an evangelic goody two shoes . . .

    Everyone seems to think (a bit like global warming) that their tiny contribution doesn't matter, and no-one will notice if just little old me downloads something that's pirated. But sure as one stone thrown into a pond won't matter, when a million people do the same, the net effect is bad for everyone. The developers lose, the consumers lose. The pond has gone.

    Nice one.

  • richispsycho #69 5 years ago

    There are two ways games developers almost completely avoid piracy imo.

    The first would be some kind of episodic content. I know nothing about hockey but for FM this could be all kind of scenario's. West Ham fire Alan Pardew, Sigames set up an scenario so you play as the new West Ham manager from that part of the season. Downloadable, maybe a small charge and you need to register your legit copy of the game. Tonnes of potential.

    Second, subscription. There is a gold mine waiting for someone to work how to create a really good MMO style football manager game. There are lots of problems to get around but this has Tonton Zola Moukoko potential! I hope Sigames hit the jackpot with something like that as I've enjoyed FM/CM for years.

  • Miles_SI #70 5 years ago

    Kallistus - your cynicism is natural in this world of spin. The statement was not sent out as a press release, but as a post on our forum and on our myspace area, to tell the fans of the game, and those who supported the release, what had happened.

    What went on behind the scenes is the same as what we've said here. Many of the EHM team and what you class the "management" team were vocal on forums of well known piracy sites when it was happening, telling people there and then that the game needed sales to survive. We try our best to be honest with our customers - tried the spin thing once many years ago (at a time when it wasn't our choice) and it was a disaster.

    Did we make mistakes? Sure we did. We have made mistakes on each of our games on both the marketing and dev sides of things for the last 15 years, as does any other dev or their publishing partner. Mistakes are essential, as otherwise we'd never learn anything.

    We do our best though, and I don't think anyone can ask more than that of anyone. No one is perfect, after all.