Football Manager 13 illegally downloaded over 10m times
"Crackers are going to crack and people will download."
Football Manager 2013 was illegally downloaded over 10 million times, according to Sports Interactive estimates.
10.1 million illegal downloads were detected, Sports Interactive boss Miles Jacobson told an audience at the London Games Conference last night (reported by MCV).
The developer was able to track the IP address of those who illegally downloaded the game through a flaw in the cracked version called Home.
Data showed 3.2 million illegal downloads came from China - the highest amount. Turkey came in second, followed by Portugal in third.
Over half a million illegal downloads came from Italy. One came from the Vatican.
Jacobson admitted one pirated game does not equal one lost sale, but claimed piracy costs Sega 176,000 sales of the game / $3.7 million in revenue. He said 1.74 per cent of illegal downloaders would potentially buy the game had the cracked version not been available.
Jacobson said sales dropped off significantly after the game was cracked in May this year (it was released in November 2012).
So, what's to be done? Not much, according to Jacobson. "Crackers are going to crack and people will download."
