Sports Interactive's Miles Jacobson has been taking to Eurogamer about the success of Football Manager 2012's use of Steam as an anti-piracy measure. This year's edition was the first to require activation through Valve's service, a point that caused controversy among some Football Manager fans. Jacobson says that the trade-off was worth it. "We got cracked after 10 days, which is actually 15 days less than normal - normally we're cracked the weekend before release."
Within those ten days of grace Jacobson says that Sports Interactive saw a sales upsurge. "Of course it could be because we've got the best game that we've ever released this year and loads of people have rushed out and bought it," Jacobson said, "but there were definitely people on the forums that were talking about a pirated version of the game who were, after four or five days, posting that, 'I can't wait any more, I'm going out and buying the game.'"
SI used some additional anti-piracy tech in conjunction with Steam's systems to counter the pirates. "As a whole, I think it's been pretty successful," said Jacobson. "If anything, we might look at more Steam integration in the future."
Jacobson said that the extra profits would be used to grow Sports Interactive, adding that the company will recruiting six to ten new employees, growing the development team by 10%. He also cryptically hinted that Football Manager may be moving to "future platforms that aren't out yet"
"I'm not talking consoles, because we're not looking to move back into the console space - at the moment. But there are other things going on that the moment that are quite interesting, that fit our user base quite well with technology." He may be referring to projects similar to Football Manager Handheld 2012 , which was just released for iPhone and iPad.
