Football Manager 25 cancelled after several delays
7 February 2025, 11:07
The makers of video game Football Manager 25 have cancelled its release after it has been hit by a number of delays.
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The game's release date had already been pushed back twice and its makers said they knew the latest news would "come as a huge disappointment".
Sports Interactive, which makes the game, said that it had made the “difficult decision” to cancel it in collaboration with its partner SEGA.
It said that it would not be able to make a good enough game in time and that it had opted to cancel it entirely as a result.
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The makers said their focus will now turn to the next release, Football Manager 26, which is expected to be released later this year.
Sports Interactive had been planning to use the new game to “create the biggest technical and visual advancement in the series for a generation, laying the building blocks for a new era”.
But it was hit by a number of challenges that meant it had not “achieved what we set out to do in enough areas of the game”.
Football Manager 2025 was initially supposed to be released in early November.
In September, it said the game would not be available until later in November, and then in October it said the game would not come out until March 2025.
But it had become clear around the turn of the year that developers would not meet important deadlines and would instead have to cancel the game. It had not been able to announce it until now because of “stakeholder compliance, including legal and financial regulations”.
Football Manager was first released in November 2004 and its most recent release hit stores in November 2023.
Sports Interactive would also not be able to simply update the 2024 edition with this year’s data, it said, since that would take too many resources away from the new game.
Football Manager had already been able to pre-order on various consoles. Sports Interactive said that refunds would be issued to those who had done so.
