Football Manager Managing is even harder Football Manager 25 canceled in a refreshing show of concern for quality Developer's big overhaul of long-running franchise is a brave, long process. Kevin Purdy Feb 7, 2025 2:47 pm | 1 Credit: Sports Interactive Credit: Sports Interactive Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreThere are only two licensed professional sports games included in Wikipedia's "List of video games notable for negative reception." Do not be fooled, however: WWE 2K20 and eFootball 2022 are just the outliers, arriving so poorly crafted as to cause notable outcry and an actual change to development plans. Most licensed professional sports games come out yearly, whether fully baked, notably improved, or not, and fans who have few other options to play with their favorite intellectual property learn to make do with them.Not so with fans of Football Manager, a series that can be traced back in some form to 1992 that has released a game almost every year, minus one ownership shift in the early 2000s. Sports Interactive, the company behind the franchise, released a statement on Thursday (in British time) that says that "following extensive internal discussions and careful consideration," Football Manager 25is canceled. The game was "too far away from the standards you deserve," so they are focusing on the 2026 version.Trying not to make the same bloody game every yearFootball Manager 2025was already delayed twice and is now quite lateas we are now midway into the European football (or what Americans call soccer) season. The game was intended to be a major overhaul.Miles Jacobson, head of developer Sports Interactive, told Eurogamer last fall that the 2025 version was the "first chapter in the new book of Football Manager." Lots of existing modes would be tossed out, including international management and "touchline shouts," or phrases you can yell or calmly administer to your team during the matches you don't actually control. The game was moving from a proprietary engine to Unity. The team reimagined and redesigned more than 500 screens full of data. Perhaps most importantly, 2025 was the year the franchise landed the official license for the Premier League.With all that, there have been a lot of scope changes. "I've de-scoped something today," Jacobson told Eurogamer in September, "that at the time of the [June] dev blog was still in scope. And we re-scoped something last week, and we up-scoped something last weekit's a very fluid process!" The reason for these changes? "It's our ambition," Jacobson said then. "I know that some people will find that difficult to believe because, 'Oh, they only work on iterations, they're making the same bloody game every year.'"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 worseFans 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 25sales. 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(orPES), 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.Kevin PurdySenior Technology ReporterKevin PurdySenior Technology Reporter Kevin is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering open-source software, PC gaming, home automation, repairability, e-bikes, and tech history. He has previously worked at Lifehacker, Wirecutter, iFixit, and Carbon Switch. 1 Comments