{"id":1072249,"date":"2026-01-22T11:20:56","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T11:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wNqp74KeHq7Rg3E8ZUzFUF"},"modified":"2026-01-22T11:20:56","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T11:20:56","slug":"a-part-of-my-brain-will-always-be-dedicated-to-the-time-someone-in-the-vatican-pirated-football-manager-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/a-part-of-my-brain-will-always-be-dedicated-to-the-time-someone-in-the-vatican-pirated-football-manager-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"A part of my brain will always be dedicated to the time someone in the Vatican pirated Football Manager 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"
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10.1 million people have illegally downloaded Football Manager 13. At least, that was the number a decade ago. I imagine the download rate has dropped off a little since then in favour of newer editions of Sports Interactive\u2019s perennial simulator, otherwise known as \u2018catnip for dads\u2019. But back in November of 2013, 10.1 was the figure.<\/p>\n

We know this because the naughty souls who cracked Football Manager in May of that year made a mistake. There was a flaw in the version of the game they spread across filesharing sites, which meant Sports Interactive could track the IP address of everyone who illegally acquired it. I\u2019m not familiar with the culture of internet pirates, but I reckon this is the sort of error that gets you laughed at by all your buccaneer peers. Like accidentally knocking a hole in the hull of your schooner, then getting too deep in your cups to notice your ship\u2019s slowly sinking in Tortuga bay.<\/p>\n

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(Image credit: Sega)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Within months, Football Manager figurehead Miles Jacobson was onstage at the London Games Conference, breaking down the stats for everyone. The il-league-al table, if you will. Portugal placed third with 781,785 downloads. Turkey took second place with 1.05m, and China led the pack with 3.2m. No trophies were awarded.<\/p>\n

Italy didn\u2019t trouble the very top of the board, which I gather is often the case when it comes to football these days. But the most notable case of piracy came from deep within Rome, in the microstate known as Vatican City. A single internet user from the Catholic Church\u2019s tiny country decided they didn\u2019t want to pay to live out their Ryan Reynolds Wrexham fantasy. This fact has lived rent-free in my head ever since\u2014which might be a sore point, since the Pope asked cardinals to start paying rent last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As far as I\u2019m aware, the Vatican doesn\u2019t take issue with videogames per se. Sure, back in 2016, Pope Francis told over a million followers sprawled out on blankets in a Polish meadow<\/a> that they should avoid isolating themselves on computers as \u201cyoung couch potatoes\u201d, and instead become activists in aid of a better world. But I broadly agree with him\u2014the world would<\/em> be improved if I spent more time attending protest marches, and less of it popping heads in Black Ops 6. What\u2019s more, there\u2019s at least one Vatican figure who has publicly and repeatedly declared a love for gaming. You may know Father Robert Ballecer from X<\/a>\u2014the \u2018Digital Jesuit\u2019 and priest who in 2019 set up a Minecraft server with the Vatican\u2019s blessing.<\/p>\n

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