Football Manager 25 has been cancelled, with developer Sports Interactive explaining why.
The long-running video game series has been releasing new entries yearly since 2004, and the latest instalment was set to add women's football and be the first on the Unity engine.
After previous announcements revealing that the game had been pushed back from November 2024 to March 2025, and would lose features like international management, versus mode, create-a-club, and more, it has now been confirmed the game will not come out at all.
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In a blog post, Sports Interactive explained that the 25 entry has now been cancelled in order to focus on Football Manager 26.
The post said: "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.
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"Due to stakeholder compliance, including legal and financial regulations, today was the earliest date that we could issue this statement."
It continued: "With the launch of FM25 we set out to create the biggest technical and visual advancement in the series for a generation, laying the building blocks for a new era.
"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."
The post explained that through "extensive" playtesting and evaluation, the new direction the game was taking was going well, but the game wouldn't have been ready in an acceptable time.
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"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," the statement added.
"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."
The developers explained that updates on Football Manager 26 will come in due course, and that all pre-order purchases of FM25 will be refunded (automatically from digital storefronts like Microsoft Store and Nintendo eShop, while other retailers should be contacted if they don't contact you).
Football Manager 2024 will not be updated with current season data, but the team are looking to extend agreements to keep it on subscription platforms for longer.
