Football Manager 2013 pirated 10.1 million times.

[Ack]

Turns out Football Manager 2013 was cracked six months after launch. And in that crack was a flaw which reported the IP address of the pirate back to Sports Interactive. The result? Sports Interactive was able to track the number of times their game was pirated and from what country. They then drew up a top 10 list for piracy around the world for their game.

1. China - 3,186,227 times
2. Turkey - 1,053,302 times
3. Portugal - 781,785 times

After that, the top offenders are Italy, South Korea, Thailand, Brazil, Poland, Serbia, and Croatia. Sports Interactive also estimates that, while not all of these would translate to sales, about 1.74% of these folks would have bought the game, or roughly $3.8 million lost in sales. They are basing their data on sales for their previous game, Football Manager 2012 during corresponding periods as well as information regarding when the crack occurred and when a patch was released to stop it, though RPS has asked for a complete explanation of how they reach their figures.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/11 ... says-devs/

[TSTR]

Yeah, I saw this and was wondering where in the hell they were pulling that percentage figure from. I guess that's a good thing for piracy advocates that they don't count all of those pirated copies as lost sales, but still... what?

[Ivo]

I think 1% to 2% of pirates buying the game might be a good estimate (have no way of knowing, but it is surely more realistic than the 100% figure used way too often) and just that gives their report credibility - which is also noted in the link provided by Ack.

However, IPs are often dynamic (they are at least for ISPs in Portugal) so I think they may be overestimating the initial numbers of pirates from the outset due to this (also mentioned in the article, but briefly and I think should be emphasized).

[BoneSnapDeez]

I was really confused until I realized that "football" meant "soccer".