At last. An official response to the negativity.
Source:
https://community.sports-interactive.com/forums/topic/596382-our-planned-approach-for-fm26-updates/
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Since the launch of the Advanced Access Beta and the full release of FM26, we have been closely monitoring your reports, feedback, and general commentary. With a record 2.5 million players thus far across platforms and significant player engagement during both the Beta and full release, we are incredibly grateful for your support - especially considering the challenges some players have been dealing with, which we take very seriously. The sheer volume of feedback we have received is unprecedented and truly demonstrates the passion and commitment within our growing community. Thank you for caring so deeply about the game. Addressing your concerns remains our top priority.
We fully understand the current situation - the game isn’t currently reflecting our usual polish level, and this is despite addressing a significant number of issues already, including stability improvements, fixing errors, and important polish. Below, we outline our immediate plans to address ongoing concerns and further enhance your experience.
As noted, the volume of feedback has been extraordinary - revealing a much broader set of priorities as a result. During the Beta period, this led to five different updates and ultimately came at the expense of a Day One update. We know this left some players dissatisfied. With the way the submission process works for a simultaneous release, and considering that nearly 500,000 people accessed the Beta, we simply needed to make those fixes immediately and couldn’t have kept players waiting until Day One. That decision is one of a number that has impacted our review scores, and we accept that.
Through the work that has been completed, including last week's 6 Nov update, the crash rate on PC is being brought more under control. Even though the vast majority of players haven’t experienced any crashes at all, we want to emphasise that any game-related crashes are not acceptable to us.
For those who have been affected by stability, our next update tackles many more issues, and our crash-free percentage will now improve further. On Console, the next update aims to resolve lag reported during matches and will implement a range of crash fixes to address concerns highlighted.
Despite this, we still have lots more work to do and we want to share our plans for continued updates and improvements across the FM26 cycle.
FM26 is the start of a new era for the series. Whilst it’s natural to draw comparisons with previous titles, the initial groundwork laid thus far is fundamental to enabling the series to expand and flourish beyond this cycle.
At the heart of our future vision is the UI which is undoubtedly the most prominently discussed topic. We are actively listening to all feedback and recognise that there are many adjustments that need to be made. For example, in the majority of the upcoming updates, in addition to general polish, you can expect a focus on areas that feel hidden or require too many clicks to access – which will ensure the UI performs more smoothly and continues to evolve towards its full potential.
As part of what will be regular updates for the next month*, we’ll be focusing on delivering fixes across all platforms broken down into two key areas:
- Stability and performance
- Quality of life and polish
Stability and performance remain at the forefront of our priorities, especially as our player base continues to expand. We’ll keep monitoring and refining this to deliver the most seamless experience possible. As outlined above, our forthcoming update will address many of the major stability concerns that have been highlighted across platforms.
Polish and quality-of-life improvements remain an ongoing focus, and you can expect consistent changes throughout the cycle, in all updates. Enhancements include both UI optimisations and addressing frequently reported actionable issues - such as the option to use the legacy spacebar functionality and allowing players to save multiple starting elevens; more of which our team are working hard to prioritise and deliver.
We’re also evaluating feedback related to broader features. While the design choices implemented in FM26 are intended to establish a foundation for future innovation, we accept that some of those choices have impacted areas of the game that are deeply valued, and so we are looking closely at that feedback as well. For example, Pass Maps are currently under consideration for an update further down the line - and we’ll keep you updated on that, and more.
Enhancing immersion remains at the heart of our goal for the series, and we remain fully committed to refining and improving FM26 throughout the cycle. Thank you again for your continued support and passion - it’s truly appreciated.
Later today (12th Nov) updates for Football Manager 26 Console and Touch will be available to download on relevant platforms. These updates focus on improving game stability and general bug fixes, along with reducing lag during matches. Full changelists will be provided following the release of the update.
We are also making progress on a new public beta track update that will be released on Steam this week (subject to the submissions process). This will introduce a legacy preference to advance through messages with the spacebar along with over 200 other fixes. We will update via
FM Assist when this is complete and ready for rollout.
*Whilst weekly is our target, this is subject to clearing QA and passing submission. Cadence will vary and differ by platform, but we are doing our best to mitigate against this.
