FILEnetworks Blog: Pirates finally crack Football Manager 2009 (Version 9.2.0)

We usually hear about games being cracked or leaked before release date but this one really gave scene groups some trouble. Football Manager 2009 (aka FM09) which was initially released to the public on 14th November 2008, remained uncracked for almost three months. FM09’s ‘uncracked streak’ ended earlier today when veteran scene group RELOADED released a seemingly cracked version of Football Manager 2009 v9.2.0 - the most current version of the game available as of 6/2/2009.

The reason why it took long to crack FM09 may be due to the custom, uncommon protection embedded into the game. The game had to be activated online in order to play. There were several leaked builds, partially working cracks and workarounds created by p2p sources prior to RELOADED’s release (by groups FM09, KATOESJA, etc). Most of these were unreliable and as those who used cracked versions had trouble installing update patches (one of the drawbacks associated with PC game piracy). RELOADED’s release however includes a full DVD ISO image of the game, a key generator, a patch to update the game to 9.2.0 as well as instructions on how to activate the game offline. It seems RELOADED exploits the ‘activate by phone’ option in FM09.

RELOADED’s release has already spread to several public and private BitTorrent trackers (according to statistics on #Tracers channel on irc.p2p-net.eu):