2025… bloody hell. What a rough year this has been already, and we’re not even halfway through February yet!
We’ve had devastating wildfires in California, unprecedented storms in the United Kingdom, ongoing war in Ukraine, Donald Trump starting his second reign of terror, and – worst of all – a young black man daring to make fun of Erling Haaland.
And now we’ve had confirmation – after months of delay and speculation – that Football Manager 25 has been cancelled. FM’s hotly-anticipated overhaul with the Unity game engine will not be happening… at least not this season.
After having a few days to digest the news, I will now deliver my thoughts on how the FM25 saga unfolded, where Sports Interactive went wrong, and why scrapping the game was the right decision.
THE WAITING
It feels like Queen Cleopatra was still alive when Sports Interactive announced they would be switching to Unity for Football Manager 25. In truth, that was about 20 months ago, in June 2023.
We waited for over a year for SI to show us just how they would bring their dragonfly project to life… but then the latter part of 2024 turned into a deluge of bad news. First, we heard that a load of features and game modes (including shouts and Fantasy Draft) were being dropped for FM25. Then international management was removed.
FM25 was delayed TWICE – initially moving from the standard early November release slot to late November. On 10 October, after being ridiculed for their dodgy attempts at showing believable screenshots, SI conceded that the game wasn’t actually ready – and further postponed release until March 2025. They also promised that there would be a gameplay reveal at the end of January 2025.
On 22 October, SI confirmed that there would be no 2024/2025 season update for FM24, due to various legal and logistical reasons. On 4 December, they reassured players that FM24 would still be available on various storefronts – and playable on XBox Game Pass and other similar platforms – until the eventual release of FM25. That was as much communication as SI would give to players during the delay.
January 2025 came and went with no further news. SI’s Buddhist vow of silence – even cutting themselves off from forum moderators and content creators – opened themselves up to more criticism, as well as some wild conspiracy theories. I’ve played enough FM to know that if you make a promise, you are expected to keep to it or suffer the consequences.
Another week passed by. Then, at 2:30am GMT on Friday 38 January – or 7 February, for those of us who still use the Gregorian calendar – SI confirmed our worst fears. Football Manager 25 had officially been canned.
If you’re wondering why SI would ‘bury’ bad news in the middle of the night, this announcement coincided with SEGA’s shareholder meeting in Japan, where it was late in the morning.
That explains the delay in making this announcement. As much as Miles Jacobson is the Studio Director of SI, he still has to answer to Sonic the Hedgehog. He has to inform SEGA’s executives of any big news first before he tells us customers.
It is what it is, mate.
THE RIGHT DECISION
Sports Interactive have prided themselves on only releasing games when they are ready. At risk of repeating myself, they’ve already been burnt once before. Championship Manager 4 was delayed and then delayed again before eventually being released in March 2003 in a horribly buggy state.
SI have been working on moving FM to Unity for about five years now, but they appear to have underestimated the amount of work involved. They had to overcome various challenges – not that they’ve ever explained what exactly those challenges were – to try and get FM25 up to scratch.
But ultimately, if the game’s not ready to play… it’s not ready to play. Rushing out a game when it’s still buggy will only cause more reputational harm than good. Look at what happened when Konami ‘replaced’ Pro Evolution Soccer with eFootball, and delivered a disastrous first release that the series is still reeling from nearly four years later.
Likewise, announcing a further delay and pushing release day beyond March would be pointless, given that the European football season will be almost over by then. It would also take precious resources away from the next release if SI released a bug-ridden game in March and then had to deliver the inevitable megapatch in May/June.
SI also appreciate that many customers would not have been happy about buying two versions of the same game in the same year. Given everything that has happened, I would likely have skipped FM25 anyway, and instead waited until the next release to start my planned career with Arsenal Women.
So, as disappointed as I am, I agree that scrapping FM25 was the right call.
For all we know, the constant delays might have been down to SEGA.
Perhaps the game was still a long way off completion even in September, and SI might have preferred to skip a season – if SEGA didn’t insist on them releasing something by the end of the fiscal year in March. That could explain why the few FM25 ‘screenshots’ we’ve seen looked more like concept art pieced together on Photoshop.
That’s just speculation, but it if this has indeed happened, then SI are no doubt thankful that SEGA have seen sense and allowed them to write off FM25 and focus on the next game. SEGA could easily have said “tondemonai” and killed the franchise there and then.
I know that there have been a lot of angry reactions to this news – on the SI forums, on Reddit, and that fascists’ playground we used to call Twitter. I’m not surprised. Many video gamers are entitled, but nobody is entitled to a video game.
If you’re calling for hundreds of game developers to lose their jobs because your precious football simulator didn’t come out this year, you should be ashamed. You are no better than those huge developers (e.g. EA, Bethesda, CD Projekt Red) who make their staff work ungodly hours and then callously lay them off.
HOW NOT TO DO P.R.
But I’m not going to shill for Sports Interactive. Regular Fuller FM readers will know that I have been very critical of the company in the past. I’m not disappointed that FM25 has been delayed twice and then ultimately abandoned; my frustration is with how it’s been communicated.
It’s hard to think of a company who’ve scored as many public relations own goals in the past three years as SI have. Football Manager 2023 was a major letdown, and the fact there were no improvements to international management – even while we were all anticipating a winter World Cup – felt like SI had missed an easy win.
Then came that “Future of Football Manager” blog post from Miles Jacobson, where he billed FM24 as “a love letter to football” and said that FM25 would be “like nothing before”.
Calling FM24 “a love letter” would be like telling your significant other, “Eh, I’ll put up with you for now… I guess.” It was still an improvement on FM23 in many respects, but at the same time, so many long-standing bugs were unfixed. Indeed, had FM25 not been delayed, I likely would never have returned to FM24.
And then we get to FM25. I don’t even know what the biggest embarrassment was:
- Was it those ‘screenshots’ that turned Evan Ferguson into a wing-back and Fran Kirby into a giant?
- Was it opening up pre-orders and releasing a roadmap a week before the game was delayed by four months?
- Was it Miles saying, “I cancelled my holiday to America so I could work on the game, aren’t I so humble?”
- Was it that SI finally got the official Premier League licence after 30 years of trying… only for the first season of that licencing agreement to basically be a write-off?
- Or was it the two-month radio silence, leaving us all to speculate about what the hell was going on?
In fairness, we now know that SI couldn’t legally say anything until it was all signed off by their bosses in Tokyo first. But surely they could have told us something, even if only to remind us that they were still alive?
For several years now, SI have promised to be more transparent and open in their communications to their player base. I’m not expecting them to tell us everything – just like I wouldn’t expect Coca-Cola to reveal their secret formula – but a lot of people want something similar to Paradox’s developer diaries. That would at least be an improvement on what we have now, which is as transparent as concrete.
Even after the cancellation, there was still no end to the omnishambles. SI promised that all pre-orders would be refunded in full by the relevant retailers, which is fair enough… but nothing justifies the fact that you could still pre-order FM25 on Steam as late as 11 HOURS after the game was scrapped!
And now that the worst-case scenario has come to pass, I do fear about the future of Football Manager. Sports Interactive have always relied on releasing one game every year, and losing an entire season’s worth of revenue could hamper the development of the next release.
Being owned by a huge conglomerate in SEGA doesn’t necessarily mean SI aren’t vulnerable. We know all too well that major companies like EA aren’t afraid to strip down or even shut down subsidiaries when their games get stuck in development hell. SEGA appear to be standing by SI for now, but perhaps that could change if there’s yet another delay?
Ultimately, I feel that the delay and cancellation on FM25 – and the poor communication surrounding it – has put Miles Jacobson in a precarious position as Studio Director. And given that SI are now advertising for a new Lead Game Designer, it seems that a major shake-up is already underway.
I hope this involves the appointment of professional PR and marketing people to handle PR and marketing. It should not be acceptable in 2025 that the director of a major video game studio posts important updates exclusively on his personal social media accounts. I’m not talking about ConcernedApe and Stardew Valley here; I’m talking about a company that employs 100+ people!
It feels like Sports Interactive is Miles Jacobson, and that Miles Jacobson is Football Manager. I’ve never met Miles, but I’m sure that he – and indeed anyone working at SI – is a decent fellow who genuinely cares about the franchise. But by many accounts, he’s not always the easiest guy to get along with, and the marketing department should perhaps be handed over to someone else.
FM25 was indeed “like nothing before”. For the first time since the Collyer brothers unveiled the first Championship Manager in 1992, Sports Interactive will not be releasing a new football game – or even a data update – this season. Their winning streak of 32 consecutive seasons has ended.
WHAT’S NEXT?
What do SI do now? Are they going under? Perhaps not, but now their focus shifts towards getting Football Manager 26 into a playable state – ideally by the usual November release slot, if not earlier.
I’d like to hope that some of the features that would have been cut from FM25 – chiefly international management – can return in some form for FM26.
And in case it wasn’t already obvious, SI must now ensure that FM26 lives up to expectations. It has to look, feel and play like a brand-new game that has clearly taken a lot of time and effort to develop. SI had a good 30 years’ worth of customer goodwill in the bank, but they’ve already burnt through a lot of that goodwill, and the fire will only grow if FM26 fails to deliver.
Note that I’m assuming the next game will still be an annual release named Football Manager 26. The latest press release never explicitly said that it would indeed be called FM26… and that worries me.
I’ve heard rumours (which might admittedly be bollocks) that SI are reconsidering moving to a subscription model – and launching a new live-service game just called Football Manager that will receive ongoing updates.
Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I started gaming in the late 1990s, when you actually owned your video game copies on CDs in big boxes. Even the thought of ‘games as a service’ – whereby companies rip off customers with monthly fees, and can potentially make said games unplayable if they become unprofitable – makes me want to retch.
Where does this leave us as players? FM24 isn’t going anywhere, so if you are planning a new save or are already in the middle of one, then go right ahead. I’m still enjoying my current career with Nacka FC in Sweden (for the most part, anyway), so I’ll press on with that for as long as the fun continues.
If you’re a Football Manager content creator who’s worried about missing out on ad revenue, then let me borrow one of those old FM shouts: “Get creative.” Keep playing FM24, but do something a bit different. Alternatively, diversify your content and play something else.
You can even go back to an earlier Football Manager or Championship Manager game if they still hold your interest. I’m already thinking about a potential new CM career to write about here – probably on either Championship Manager 00/01 or Championship Manager 01/02.
Of course, there are plenty of other video games you can enjoy in the meantime – and not just football-related, either. Civilization VII was literally released this week, but this self-confessed strategy gamer hasn’t even got round to playing Civilization VI yet!
Just one more match turn, I promise…
So those were my final, final thoughts on Football Manager 25 – the game that never was.
I’ll still be posting CM and FM content on here over the coming months, including updates on my ongoing Nacka save. You can also find me on Threads and BlueSky… and just in case you want to support me financially during these tough times, I’ve set up an exclusive OnlyFans account. Any and all help is appreciated.
Fuller FM 