Football Manager Series

kamy100 said:
Infact it was updated earlier this morning at 0526:
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I've read such conflicting reports about these updates - a few people have pointed out that 4th March was (apparently) the release date in the Steam DB for a long time previous to these updates. But obviously something has been changed... hopefully in order to be able to say on Monday "beta is out now" or something crazy.
 
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Remember, this account was the first to break news of the initial delay before it was officially announced. Not saying this isn't just clickbait, but their previous post(s) into the matter proved valid.
 
Good spot. Yeah, I'd be inclined to believe that too. Why couldn't they have announced that in January if they knew of further delays - well, perhaps there are legal issues with promised dates being missed that need to be resolved first. I guess you can't afford to put yourself in a position where e.g. the Premier League sue you, especially when you don't have a game to sell.

I was going to say "surely at this point you'd just delay it until September/October and call it FM26", but again, there will be contracts that require a game to be released I'd imagine (let alone the financial turmoil they must be panicking about now). What an absolute disaster.

I keep thinking about something I said back in September... I see this all the time in my line of work, and I'm really worried it's happened to something I love:

Chris Davies said:
I've been worried for a while - not because it's a new engine (which is obviously a worry), but because their rebrand of the studio (Sports Interactive) and the communications they've been putting out there absolutely stink of a highly-paid consultancy takeover-and-destroy (which I see all the time in my day-job).

There's been a lot of stuff on social media about their studio makeover that's made me go "oh Christ no, they've never done 'corporate bullshit' before and suddenly there's a rebrand, a new logo that's just the old one, a Sports Interactive website with an 'about our brand' section (who the fuck cares, you're not a fashion house, it's so cringeworthy) and buzz-phrases like 'we're true to the game' (expensive, meaningless drivel), along with an Instagram page full of photos of the team giving speeches, winning awards and other stock-photo-like imagery of everyone having fun at work"...

Whenever a company does this, it's so transparent / desperate, and it absolutely stinks of a well-paid consultancy or an agency coming in and charging hundreds of thousands of pounds to deliver absolutely nothing of worth to the consumer at the end of it all (in-fact having the opposite effect, often tying the hands of those who previously had freedom to work but now have to cope with not only a new engine, but new middle-managers who simply put up roadblocks in the road to getting shit done).
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Chris Davies said:
I just feel like it might be too much change (and not all of it positive) at once.
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Anyone tried the engine mod that was posted to Reddit a day or so ago? You can read about it here:
People who have tried it on Reddit and a few international websites are raving about how well it plays.
 
FCDallas_Fan said:
Screenshot_20250201-214339.png.adf3ca721f704789e54413b77dcf7db2.png


Remember, this account was the first to break news of the initial delay before it was officially announced. Not saying this isn't just clickbait, but their previous post(s) into the matter proved valid.
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They were right once, doesn't mean they will be again.
 
I think they are following the same strategy as before the postponement and will only release FM26 in autumn.
That they don't show anything is because they don't have enough or the match engine isn't ready yet and because they have shareholders they can't communicate that they're in a relegation place.

I had the same experience in a company when I went into the office in the morning and a friend texted me just outside the office to see if I was also affected by the office closure. Then 30 seconds later I realised that something was wrong in the office and we were informed.

All for the benefit of the shareholders.
 
If they do announce a delay till May, to stop people cancelling pre-orders FM26 will be delayed to Feb/March next year and they will slowly bring the game back to a November release.
 
I guess SI wish they had the licences on FM24 for one year so they can do a season update and throw out the pressure for november 2025
 
FCDallas_Fan said:
Anyone tried the engine mod that was posted to Reddit a day or so ago? You can read about it here:
People who have tried it on Reddit and a few international websites are raving about how well it plays.
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I tried a few games and found pass accuracy and number of goals scored by my lower league team suspiciously and unrealistically high - I feel like the base gameplay may be tuned to support more realistic stats, at the expense of it being visually less realistic.

(It also seems to be the case with football game updates that easier to win = "incredible upgrade". See my comment in the FC25 thread.)

That said, I only tried it for a few games. I'm waiting for someone with more time than me to run it for a season and compare their season's stats to the season before.

Be warned if you use it though, watching highlights of games before you use the modded file are screwed up because the matches are generated differently. I don't really want to risk my multi-season save for the sake of it!
 
H_G said:
They were right once, doesn't mean they will be again.
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They've been right more than once. Same source provided info about the J1 license and EPL license before each was announced. There is more, but those are the two I remember. The track record is pretty good all things considering (the internet lol).
 
FEBRUARY GRAPHICS UPDATE:-

GRAPHICS:
Faces Megapack - v2025.02
NewGan Regen Faces - NO UPDATE
FC12 Kits - 03/02/25
Metallic Logos - v2025.03
Trophies Megapack - v2025.02 - Complete file only.
FM Turf - NO UPDATE
Stadium Improvements - NO UPDATE
Stadium Fix - NO UPDATE

TOOLS:
Data Update - Will update this file end of week after transfer deadline.
Licensing Fix - v4.1 - NO UPDATE
Increased Realism - December Update 2024
Agents Pack - NO UPDATE
Real Media Pack - NO UPDATE

One Drive Link:-
Football Manager
 
FCDallas_Fan said:
Interesting time to need a new Lead Game Designer...

https://www.sports-interactive.com/vacancy/lead-game-designer
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Not really. Pretty normal in the industry and also Lead Designer doesn't mean there is only one Lead. Especially since apparently there is a Head of Design according to the text.

It could be that they just have grown their design team and realized they need another Lead to split the design team in multiple groups. It is pretty common in studios to have multiple Lead designers.

So I wouldn't read too much into that I'm a negative way.

Quite the opposite: the first red flag a studio is in trouble is when they stop their hiring flow. Apparently they are still hiring and even on a high value position that isn't cheap and didn't just promote someone internally.

So for me this more goes in the direction that even if they don't release in March they aren't in trouble.
 
I have looked now on YouTube and it is just full of people panicking about how much of a shit show they think FM25 is going to be.

Why are people so worried - They already announced that quite a lot is being cut from the game as they have no time.

It will still fundamentally be FM at the end of the day with some features being cut from previous years.
This has always happened with new versions of the game - I always remember FM being shite when introducing a new engine with numerous bugs and issues.
The issues have always been fixed with next years version and the game being more feature packed than the previous version.

FM25 will be playable, however FM26 should be the proper version of the new engine where bugs will be fixed and majority of features added.

When have SI released a version of FM which you have been disappointed with?
 
Jay-Jay 10 said:
Not really. Pretty normal in the industry and also Lead Designer doesn't mean there is only one Lead. Especially since apparently there is a Head of Design according to the text.

It could be that they just have grown their design team and realized they need another Lead to split the design team in multiple groups. It is pretty common in studios to have multiple Lead designers.

So I wouldn't read too much into that I'm a negative way.

Quite the opposite: the first red flag a studio is in trouble is when they stop their hiring flow. Apparently they are still hiring and even on a high value position that isn't cheap and didn't just promote someone internally.

So for me this more goes in the direction that even if they don't release in March they aren't in trouble.
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If the SI Forums are to be believed, this position is for the individual that was leading the match engine design. There's some other posts in the same thread that hint to this being correct. If true, that's a bigger deal imo because that's where the bread-and-butter of FM lies. But I'm not here to sway one way or the other, just reporting info like y'all and sharing my opinion.
 
Lead Designers as funny as it sounds rarely do design themselves.

Job of a lead is usually more people managment and feedback on designs which looking at the job description also seems to be the case here, so I wouldn't be to worried. Since the majority of work is done by the designers themselves.
 
They didn't had a B plan. If they had it, they would made the licences they had for FM24 extendable for one more year to release a season update in case the release of the new era would be rescheduled.

Now they will miss a year for the first time I think !
 
FCDallas_Fan said:
Normally I wouldn't share this and just brush it off as crazy internet conspiracy theory, BUT since it's from Jack (WorkTheSpace)...

https://x.com/WorkTheSpace/status/1887110377143484652

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I'm still not buying it. SI had to be using stash/git right? Right?!?!
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Also wouldn't think that is true. Most company's use backups in different forms and have multiple versions of their game at any time.

Regarding the cancellation itself: it is the right move since they never could have lived up to expectations.
 
I guess SI will have to pay a compensation to the FA and UEFA and FIFA and others for not using the licences for the 24-25 season
 
Someone deleted the matchday code? In 2025...
Everything isn't just backed up anymore it is backed up in multiple places.

I love the internet and conspiracy theories.
 
VierGraustufen said:
I think they are following the same strategy as before the postponement and will only release FM26 in autumn.
That they don't show anything is because they don't have enough or the match engine isn't ready yet and because they have shareholders they can't communicate that they're in a relegation place.

I had the same experience in a company when I went into the office in the morning and a friend texted me just outside the office to see if I was also affected by the office closure. Then 30 seconds later I realised that something was wrong in the office and we were informed.

All for the benefit of the shareholders.
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Due to stakeholder compliance, including legal and financial regulations, today was the earliest date that we could issue this statement :

What I wrote about the shareholders. lol:R1
 
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