Sports Interactive: Preventing piracy helped us hire 17 new developers

Football Manager 2013 had more staff than ever working on it… because last year’s version was piracy free for two weeks.

Football Manager 2012 sold better during its opening week because new security measures meant it took hackers a little longer to crack the game.

Developer Sports Interactive and publisher Sega then invested the extra revenue into the studio by hiring ‘17 or 18′ staff, which meant this year’s game boasts over 900 new features.

Last year the measures we took meant the game wasn’t pirated for two week,” studio director Miles Jacobson told MCV.

And the extra sales we got in that two weeks is why we have managed to hire more staff this year. The new game has a new system being used, and as of the time of talking the Beta hadn’t been cracked. If we can hold a few more weeks, it would be a benefit to retail and ourselves. And ultimately for the consumer, because once again if we do much better this year, we will invest that back into the studio, take on more people and do more features.”

Football Manager 2013 debuted at No.4 in the charts this week, and Jacobson hopes the game’s new classic mode will encourage gamers with less time on their hands to give the title a go.

We are expecting this to be the biggest selling Football Manager we ever had,” he added.