Football Manager 2025 officially canceled by Sports Interactive, focus shifted to next release

[Hitotsunagi]

Development Update: Football Manager 25

Sports Interactive regret to inform that, following extensive internal discussion and careful consideration with SEGA, we have made the difficult decision to cancel Football Manager 25 and shift our focus to the next release.

www.footballmanager.com

Sports Interactive regret to inform that, following extensive internal discussion and careful consideration with SEGA, we have made the difficult decision to cancel Football Manager 25 and shift our focus to the next release.

For the large numbers of you who pre-ordered FM25, we thank you enormously for your trust and support – we’re very sorry to have let you down. Please see the FAQs below on obtaining your refund.

We know this will come as a huge disappointment, especially given that the release date has already moved twice, and you have been eagerly anticipating the first gameplay reveal. We can only apologise for the time it has taken to communicate this decision. Due to stakeholder compliance, including legal and financial regulations, today was the earliest date that we could issue this statement.

Due to a variety of challenges that we’ve been open about to date, and many more unforeseen, we currently haven’t achieved what we set out to do in enough areas of the game, despite the phenomenal efforts of our team. Each decision to delay the release was made with the aim of getting the game closer to the desired level but, as we approached critical milestones at the turn of the year, it became unmistakably clear that we would not achieve the standard required, even with the adjusted timeline.

Whilst many areas of the game have hit our targets, the overarching player experience and interface is not where we need it to be. As extensive evaluation has demonstrated, including consumer playtesting, we have clear validation for the new direction of the game and are getting close – however, we’re too far away from the standards you deserve.

We could have pressed on, released FM25 in its current state, and fixed things down the line - but that’s not the right thing to do. We were also unwilling to go beyond a March release as it would be too late in the football season to expect players to then buy another game later in the year.

Huge blow for SEGA. One of their most consistent performers, and the game has a lot of extra complications with licenses and agreements that a cancellation won't be made easy.

The game, which was a change of engines to Unity, was previously delayed out of the November date to March, news were supposed to be given in January and now that. In a way it's expected considering the lack of information. let's see how they rebound of that. Stuff clearly went very wrong.

I'm not sure if this is thread-worthy? But we'll, it's a pretty unique event, the game has been coming out religiously every year for decades now

 

[ILikeFeet]

holy fuck, that's bad. Sega Europe just keeps getting body blows

 

[Kirby64]

Yet another case of Sega stepping in with a bat to reign in their European holdings.

 

[tobinator]

March release already kind of threw a wrench in the annual schedule, so this might be for the better. Will probably reflect very poorly for SEGA's fiscal year.

I think it be a good thing in the long run. Due to the nature of these games, nothing they created so far will be scraped, and this is essentially just gonna another delay with a name change to Football Manager 2026. We're gonna be looking at a Fall 2025 release, so the extra polish time and the fact that this will now be seen as the series' triumphant return with brand new tech, might just help it reach greater audience.

 

[Joseki]

SEGA Europe is on a nightmare run, even the "old reliable" Football Manager now is in trouble.

 

[Lelouch0612]

At this point, it was the only thing to do.

However, disrupting your reliable annual release like that is a big mistake. They should have been way more careful.

 

[Kirby64]

At this point, it was the only thing to do.

However, disrupting your reliable annual release like that is a big mistake. They should have been way more careful.

I don't know much about FM as a game, but aren't the differences between each game (at least the old ones) essentially just a roster/database update of sorts? Feels like they should've been more careful that their big, shiny new engine/game would actually function correctly before promising a huge overhaul for 2024, that might have let them push out a more "traditional" FM game while working on their shiny new one.

 

[Aostia82]

that's bad, also under a financial point of view imho: it has been a reliable asset for the European area for awhile

 

[KarlRemarx]

I don't know much about FM as a game, but aren't the differences between each game (at least the old ones) essentially just a roster/database update of sorts? Feels like they should've been more careful that their big, shiny new engine/game would actually function correctly before promising a huge overhaul for 2024, that might have let them push out a more "traditional" FM game while working on their shiny new one.

They can't get away with shipping basic roster updates for this franchise, unofficial roster updates are trivial to install (and fully integrated with Steam Workshop).

It's laudable that they're doing the "right" thing for their customers, which is rare in the field of annualised licensed sports games. But obviously the solution to this was not to put themselves in this situation to begin with and have some kind of fallback.