NO LIVE FOOTBALL to watch and plenty of time on your hands… what do you do? 

Well, it seems that many fans have turned to Football Manager 2020 to pass the hours. 

Earlier this week, Sports Interactive — makers of the popular computer game — made the latest version available for free via video distribution service Steam. 

Football Manager, which sees you virtually take over as manager of a club and attempt to bring them success, has since hit a record number of players at one time as football lovers look to fill the void in their lives. 

“Last Wednesday, we decided to give the game away free for a week,” Dr Tom Markham, who works as Head of Strategic Business Development at Sports Interactive, told The42.

“A) People have less things to do when they are at home and B) we wanted to get people who mightn’t have played in a while to see if they liked it or not.

“It’s gone berserk in recent days. At any one time, you have in and around the size of a football stadium playing the game. So you might have between 30,000-60,000.

Yesterday, we had the most players playing the game simultaneously in the history of the series. We had 155,000 playing globally at once.

“The vast majority of sales tend to be when the beta version is released — where you get early access — the official release day and at Christmas, which are all in quick succession, although you do also see intermittent sales after that.”

Football Manager 2020 will remain free on Steam until Wednesday, 25 March. 

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