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   NHL Eastside Hockey Manager, the most prominent hockey management series (not that there's much of a competition) was buried alive - amazingly - not by EA, but actually by the "fans" who chose to download a pirated version of the last edition, instead of contributing to Sports Interactive's retirement funds. The sales registered by NHL EHM 2007 were so appalling, that the devs saw themselves forced into announcing the series' cancellation yesterday, for an indefinite - though not necessarily infinite - period of time.

   The bad news was handed by Miles Jacobson (Sports Interactive MD) on the SI Games forums. The guy didn't retain from qualifying their game as being "the best Hockey management game in the history of gaming ever", in order to contrast the very low sales obtained by NHL EHM 2007. Not only were the revenues insufficient to pay for the licenses used in the game, but they couldn't even cover the development costs, which is why their only rational option was to get a coffin, some nails and a hammer, and start hammering. The sole culprits, they say, are those who freely pirated the game, to whom they dedicated the following, surprisingly diplomatic message (although a couple of rough words would have been more than enough...):
"And to those of you who pirated it, this is what happens when you steal. There are no excuses you can give that are valid for stealing - you have lead to the demise of a game that you enjoyed playing."    The good news, if you can still imagine any in this context, is that the team from Sports Interactive made a last effort to put together another Eastside Hockey Manager 2007 patch (v3.0.3). And the guys that worked on the NHL EHM series was spread around other internal projects, including "a new idea" they'll be announcing later this year.