Sports Interactive’s forum announcement has been ablaze with angry protests since it was posted, with 39 pages of over 3800 comments.
The decision comes from publisher Sega, who said outright it was to combat piracy, even if it only stopped a quarter of the casual gamers who copy the game from friends.
”As you may remember, last year we decided against any activation as we couldn’t find a solution that we thought struck a balance on combating piracy and not penalising the genuine consumer,” said a Sega spokesperson. ”We did make our position on anti-piracy pretty clear though, we see it as a big problem for our game and we said we’d continue to look for a solution that stopped, or made it very difficult to pirate the game and play it for free.”
The publisher added: ”Make no mistake, if a quarter of the people that usually pirate the game switch to purchasing Football Manager 2012, the sales of the game worldwide would more than double. This would lead to increased development budgets and more benefits for all of you who do buy the game.”
Many games have a one-time activation, including those purchased on Steam. The biggest issue with most consumers have been games with always-on DRM, like Diablo III. Let us know what you think.
