Football Manager 2013 illegally downloaded 10 million times, SI claims

The PC version of Football Manager 2013 was illegally downloaded over ten million times, according to its producer.

Speaking at the London Games Conference 2013, Sports Interactive director Miles Jacobson revealed that a total of 10.1 million people downloaded a pirated version of the game, MCV reports.

When the game was cracked on May 12 there was a flaw left behind called Home. This flaw allowed the Sports Interactive team to track the IP address of everybody who was logging in to play an illegal copy of the game.

According to Jacobson, 3.2 million of these downloads came from China, while 1.05 came from Turkey and 781,785 from Portugal. These were the three countries where Jacobson said the game was pirated most.

He also added that 547,000 copies were pirated in Italy, with a single illegal download coming from within the Vatican City.

Jacobson said that while it would be "ridiculous" to claim that each download equalled one lost sale, he did estimate that 1.74% of those who had illegally downloaded the game would have bought it had there been no crack available, leading to a total revenue loss of $3.7 million.

The latest game in the series, Football Manager 2014, was released on October 30.

In CVG's Football Manager 2014 review, we said: "It's good, it's better than last year, it's worth the money and you will probably top 1000 hours of play again. Get it, play the proper mode, have a ball."