A cracked version of popular football manager simulation game Football Manager 2009 (aka FM09) has leaked to BitTorrent trackers right on the game’s official release date. For a change, it’s not a group from the warez scene that is responsible for the leak. In fact, the leak seems to have originated from TorrentLeech (TL), a well known private torrent tracker. Full game plus the update patch along with a modified executable (aka a crack) is included with the leaked release. This release will of course spread to public torrent trackers, one click hosting sites and so on.
As far as I know this game requires online activation and uses a custom copy protection system. Whether the cracked exe has the protection completely stripped or is merely a workaround remains to be seen. If the developers built any triggers into the game code to be activated upon detection of a pirated copy, a mere activation bypass will not be sufficient for the pirates if they want to play the game properly (similar to what happened with early releases of Mass Effect). Regardless, the cracked version of the game seems to work fine for the moment and it does not require online activation. Looks like it’s good news for pirates as well as for legitimate buyers who could not get the game activated due to official activation servers crashing down.
Game Description
Football Manager 2009 (abbreviated to Football Manager 09 or FM09) is a football manager simulation video game. It was released on PC, Mac and Playstation Portable on 14 November 2008. The demo of the game was released at midnight on 2 November via the News of the World, BitTorrent and Steam. Some of the new features and box art for the game were announced via a series of videos on 3 September 2008, other new features have been released via a series of podcasts and online blogs.
The main new feature to the game is the 3D match engine. This can now be watched fullscreen, with a widescreen option available. Other features include being able to play as a female or male manager, improvements to the interaction between the manager and his assistant manager, improved mid-match team talks and tactics, training players to have preferred moves and transfer rumors. The player rating will have a decimal point, eg. 6.8 or 8.3 instead of 7 or 8. There will also be press conferences, where you can build up a rapport with the journalists, and the finance and transfer systems have been completely reworked. The game is set to feature more players than ever before, with over 350,000 in the database at the time of the game's announcement. Many of the new features were tested using a Football Manager Live beta. The PC version has a skin similar to the one used in Football Manager 2008.
The handheld version will include a 2D match engine for the first time, and the game will be shipped with two skins; a light and a dark alternative.The game suffered setbacks on and before launch day, most notably many players found themselves unable to activate and thus play the game due to its DRM and servers providing activation for the DRM failing to cope with the heavy use
System Requirements
- OS: Windows XP or Vista
- Processor: XP: 1.4GHz or Faster / Vista: 2.0GHz or Faster Supported Processors: Intel Pentium 4, Intel Core, AMD Athlon
- Memory: XP: 512MB RAM / Vista: 1.0GB RAM
- Hard Drive Space: 2GB
- DVD-Drive: 4x Speed
- Video Card: 128MB *Supported Chipsets (see below)
- Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible
- Directx: Version 9.0c (included)
- LAN: TCP/IP compliant
- Input: Keyboard, Mouse
