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Developer of Football Manager wants equivalent of Steam on Android to combat piracy

'Could revolutionise the market for all'

Developer of Football Manager wants equivalent of Steam on Android to combat piracy

Miles Jacobson, studio director of Football Manager creator Sports Interactive, has called for "something like Steam for Android" to negate the sky-high piracy rates on the platform.

In a guest blog posted on Wired, Jacobson talks about the 9:1 piracy rate suffered by his company since the release of Football Manager Handheld 2012 on Google's platform, and praises Valve's Steam distribution software for combating piracy on PC.

"Piracy is a fact of life for game developers. I'm not stupid enough to think that 100 per cent of pirated games are lost sales - there are, of course, some people who would not buy or play a game if it wasn't available for free, but there are also some dishonest people who pirate things they would otherwise buy, just because they can."

Wide of the mark

The resulting first-week legal sales of the Android version of Football Manager Handheld 2012 were described as being "[in] the 10,000-50,000 band".

"This isn't spectacular - the iOS version reached that milestone on its first day - but it was where we expected it to be."

Jacobson told Pocket Gamer a couple of weeks ago that he felt "angry and upset" about the piracy levels on Android, saying that the company would still be open to making future titles available on Google's mobile platform, but only if sales targets are met.

Eurogamer
Will Wilson
Will Wilson
Will's obsession with gaming started off with sketching Laser Squad levels on pads of paper, but recently grew into violently shouting "Tango Down!" at random strangers on the street. He now directs that positive energy into his writing (due in no small part to a binding court order).