Football Manager 25 canceled in a refreshing show of concern for quality

The developer’s statement notes that preorder customers are getting refunds. Answering a question that has always been obvious to fans but never publishers, the company notes that, no, Football Manager 2024 will not get an update with the new season’s players and data. The company says it is looking to extend the 2024 version’s presence on subscription platforms, like Xbox’s Game Pass, and will “provide an update on this in due course.”

Releasing the game might have been worse

Fans eager to build out their dynasty team and end up with Bukayo Saka may be disappointed to miss out this year. But a developer with big ambitions to meaningfully improve and rethink a long-running franchise deserves some consideration amid the consternation.

Licensed sports games with annual releases do not typically offer much that’s new or improved for their fans. The demands of a 12-month release cycle mean that very few big ideas make it into code. Luke Plunkett, writing at Aftermath about the major (American) football, basketball, and soccer franchises, notes that, aside from an alarming number of microtransactions and gambling-adjacent “card” mechanics, “not much has changed across all four games” in a decade’s time.

Even year-on-year fans are taking notice, in measurable ways. Electronic Arts’ stock price took a 15 percent dip in late January, largely due to soft FC 25 sales. Players “bemoaned the lack of new features and innovation, including in-game physics and goal-scoring mechanisms,” analysts said at the time, according to Reuters. Pick any given year, and you can find reactions to annual sports releases that range from “It is technically better but not by much” to “The major new things are virtual currency purchases and Jake from State Farm.”

So it is that eFootball 2022, one of the most broken games to ever be released by a brand-name publisher, might be considered more tragedy than farce. The series, originally an alternative to EA’s dominant FIFA brand under the name Pro Evolution Soccer (or PES), has since evened out somewhat. Amid the many chances to laugh at warped faces and PS1 crowds, there was a sense of a missed opportunity for real competition in a rigid market.

Football Manager is seemingly competing with its own legacy and making the tough decision to ask its fans to wait out a year rather than rush out an obligatory, flawed title. It’s one of the more hopeful game cancellations to come around in some time.