Football Manager documentary hitting UK cinemas next month

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FilmNova is doing a documentary titled Alternative Reality: The Football Manager Documentary, which will be a feature-length film that goes into the game’s popularity and impact on the culture of football it has within the profession. I think as Americans we don’t really grasp how popular Football Manager is overseas, just a quick look at their Steam stats shows why its one of the top 5 played games on Steam .

Sadly the documentary is only going to be shown for one night at Vue cinemas across the UK on October 7th. It said if you want your local Vue to show the film, to follow them and bother them on social media. After October 7th the documentary will be made available word wide for download and streaming.

The documentary isn’t our story – it’s the story of the people who escape to the alternative reality of being a football manager, and the effect this has had on their lives. It’s also the story of how a computer game made by football fans has become a part of the world it set out to replicate. But it’s not just for people who play – it’s also for people who’ve ever wondered why others spend so much time escaping into this world.” – Miles Jacobson (Sports Interactive chief)

It has also been confirmed that after the Vue screening there will be another short film revealing new features in Football Manager 2015. Hit the jump for a list of Vue’s showing the documentary on the 7th of October.

Football Manager 2014 breaks another PC record in the UK

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Its not secret that Football Manager is a highly successful series in the UK. Everyone knows that. What is shocking is that this yearly updated title has broken a new record. Maybe its that World Cup fever that has everyone wanting to manage a football team.

Football Manager 2014 has broken the record of most weeks spent at the number one spot in the UK PC game charts. It has spent a total of 22 weeks at number one – 18 of those being consecutive.

Football Manager 2014 hit PCs world wide last year on October 30th, but that isn’t stopping people from buying copies this last week, when it topped the full priced PC chart in the UK once again beating out new titles like Wildstar, Wolfenstien: The New Order and even EA’s cash crop The Sims 3.

Football Manager 2013 has been ‘pirated over 10.1 million times’

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Miles Jacobson, studio head over at Sports Interactive has stated that Football Manager 2013 has been illegally downloaded well over 10.1 million times, during his talk at the London Games Conference.

How did they get this number? According to Jacobson the crack had a ‘Home’ flaw which allowed the developers to trace and track IP addresses of the pirates. So which country had the most pirated copies of the game? Not surprising it was China with 3.2 million downloads followed by Turkey with 1.05 million.

Out of the 547,000 people that downloaded the game in Italy was from Vatican City, I’m assuming downloading pirated software is not shunned by God.  Of course just because they pirated the game doesn’t mean they lost a sale, which Sports Interactive seems to agree. They do say they lost 176,000 sales (their figure) due to pirates. That would mean that 1.74% of pirates would have purchased the game, but didn’t due to them getting it for free. How much did SEGA lose? $3.7 million in revenue. They say that this lead to the team creating harder to crack DRM for Football Manager 2014.