Is it Possible to Cheat the game?
Written by Qzinho // March 24, 2010 // Opinion // 7 Comments
Every year people seem to claim that they have found this cheat or that cheat or if you do this then you’ll be rewarded for it. Are they actually cheats though?
For those of you old enough to remember back to the days of Championship Manager 2 there was a great exploit – buy every player for nothing! That’s right you could buy every player without having to pay a transfer fee. All you had to do was bid a stupidly high amount of money to get your bid accepted, then once it was go back and change the transfer fee to £0 but instead of pressing OK which meant you went back into negotiations you clicked cancel and the game would remember £0 as the accepted transfer fee! To me that is the epitome of cheats in Football Manager.
So using my old CM2 cheat as the benchmark let’s go through some of FM2010′s so-called ‘cheats’
Genie Scout
What it does: Genie is a program which you load you saved game in and it shows you all the hidden data you can’t see in-game like a players current and potential ability.
Is it a cheat?: Not really, all the data is already available by looking in the editor. You’re not cheating the game or exploiting the code as the game already knows everyone’s CA and PA. All it does is make the game a little easier and takes some of the fun and achievement in unearthing some of your own diamonds.
FMrte
What it does: FMrte is a real-time editor that let’s you access your saved game and change players attributes, club reputations and finances among other things.
Is it a cheat?: If you classify cheating yourself as a cheat then yes it’s a cheat! It doesn’t fool the game, only yourself when you win every game because you’ve got a successful tactic and team full of players with a current ability of 200.
Restarting the game so that you haven’t just lost that match
What it does: If you quit the game during the match or just afterwards and don’t save the game you’ll be able to load the game up again before that match and play it over and over again until you win.
Is it a cheat? No. But you are! If with a mix of your tactics and interaction with your players you’re still not getting the results you should consider the fact that you may well be in the wrong job. If you do decide to carry on with this method I wish you good luck as you should have noticed by now the outcome of the game is largely random and the chances of getting the same result twice are about the same as Megan Fox delivering you breakfast in bed. I can’t remember if it was Championship Manager 2 or 3, it could even have been CM4 but if you went about replaying matches such as cup finals it would be listed in your history as having lost the cup for every time you did it. If someone from Sports Interactive is reading – please make sure if it’s not in the game it is put back in so we can highlight the cheaters in future!
The Corner Trick/Bug/Cheat
What is it?: By setting your players up in a certain way at attacking corners you can exploit the match engine and score a fair few goals from it, luckily the AI doesn’t exploit this flaw (It’s a shame that SI haven’t released a patch which detects if people are using it and then uses it on them!).
Is it a cheat?: As it exploits a flaw in the code then technically it’s a bug. Using it to your advantage knowing that the AI doesn’t use can mean that it becomes a cheat.
Friendlies against bigger teams
What is it?: Using pre-season friendlies to make lot’s of gate money by getting big teams to play at your ground.
Is it a cheat?: Nope, not in the slightest. Lots of lower league teams play friendlies against bigger reputation teams in real life. The only difference being that when Manchester United send a team to Barrow in July it’s usually the reserves and youth players.
You
Are you a cheat?: If you’re using any of the methods above then technically you’re only cheating yourself and not the game.
In my opinion there are no cheats in Football Manager 2010. Many will claim that the corner bug is a cheat, it is also a random one as you can’t guarantee if you will get a corner let alone the chance to score it. Compare it to the transfer bug in CM2 which worked on every transfer you negotiated there was no randomness to it.
Are there any other Cheats/Bugs/Exploits that I haven’t covered?
7 Comments on "Is it Possible to Cheat the game?"
I wouldn’t list the Corner tactic as a cheat, because.. well, think about it logically here for a second. Who in their right mind WOULDN’T send their big man up to take the opposition keeper out of the play, eh? Real managers use it: not a cheat.
It’s an exploit in the game code therefore it’s a cheat! If there was a random variable in the exploit then I’d consider it not to be a cheat!
As far as I know there aren’t any in 2010, but in 09 there are a couple,
1. Signing on fee – The game is incorrectly programmed so that signing on fee has no effect. You can offer £0 every time and they accept.
2. Wage reduction – With the above in mind, you can actually reduce a player’s contract by offering him slightly less every time and he accepts. e.g Beckham on £100,000, you offer him 95,000 and he will accept, and you can keep going until about 60,000 when he will finally notice. On a small scale with somebody on about 45,000 or less you just offer 2-3 and eventually 1k less every time and keep going. I got the likes of Ashley Young down to £13,000 a week. And it costs nothing because you don’t have to offer a signing on fee.
I knew you could negotiate wages down but I didn’t realise you could do it to that extent!
Yeh man, I had the whole Villa team on under 20k apart from one player at one point, while I was like top 4!
“Friendlies against bigger teams” is absolutely no cheating. It is a great way that small clubs have to win good money.
There is a cheat in the game that allows you to play against teams where they wouldn’t realistically travel to in real life – therefore it’s a cheat