The delay to Football Manager 25 is a bitter blow to the FM community, which would usually be sinking its teeth into a beta save right now.
There had been hope that Sports Interactive would be able to provide a data update to FM24, providing the new leagues, transfers, and competition rules to the existing game. This had been done previously when major engine changes necessitated a delay to the usual release. However, Sports Interactive has once again disappointed players by saying that won't happen this time.
No Update For FM24
In a statement released on Twitter, SI answered the community requests for a data update with the following:
"Following the announcement of the delay fo FM25, many of you have called for an official FM24 update with season 2024/25 data. This is something we have been exploring since the initial internal conversation about postponing the game's release.
Having now scoped the work that would be required, and despite a good initial response from many of our licensors, we cannot lift assets that we are using in FM25 and make them work in FM24 without recreating them in full. The same applies for many competition rules, translations and database changes that cannot be back ported. The updated assets and data would both be required to obtain licensor approval - they cannot be separated.
This is a substantial undertaking which would take critical resources away from delivering FM25 to the highest possible quality, which we simply cannot compromise on.
If you have pre-purchased FM25 and wish to seek a refund then please contact your retailer.
We sincerely thank you for your patience. We are passionately committed to delivering the best game possible when we release in March 2025."
It was always thought one of the hurdles to this update would be the licenses that SI has acquired for Football Manager since the last time this happened, and that appears to be the case.
However, not all is lost. There are community-made mods that do turn FM24 into FM25 (at least from a database perspective) that PC players can install and enjoy until Football Manager 25 finally arrives.