This has happened before.

Football Manager 2025 | FM25 Delay Championship Manager 4
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In today's video, I discuss the alarming similarities between the delayed release of FM25 and the launch of Championship Manager 4 way back in 2003.
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About Me: My name is Clayts. I'm 32 and make videos here on KZbin as well as live streaming over on Twitch. I mainly make videos all about Football Manager. On FM24, I'll run Movies, Let's Plays, Simulations, Experiments, Tactic Videos, Tutorials as well as Tips, Hints and Tricks. Make sure to subscribe for regular FM uploads!
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Football Manager 2025 | FM25 DELAYED
Football Manager 2025 | FM25 Release
Football Manager 2025 | FM25 Launch
#fm25 #FootballManager #FootballManager2025

[@macsikkila]

Wait!? 🤯 CM4 was 20 years ago?! Surely it can't be...😂 If that would be true I would be almost 40 and have wasted my life playing some footb... Oh...

[@careychurchillkenarthur5478]

that's some "football manager ruined my life" type stuff right there 😂. Anyways, I'm 18 now, so here's to me typing the same comment 20 years from now

[@raygrimes9203]

Dito

[@dylanmoorcraft3105]

Been playing since 93/94 champ man - been playing 1000 plus hours per year since,😊 worrying!

[@GandWizard]

Impossible. Enjoying football manager cannot be wasting your life!

[@brgracio]

@@dylanmoorcraft3105 the first CM I played, it was a version with the Serie A and Maradona was there, on a 2 year ban for drug abuse.

[@kinghernan9491]

You're saying I only managed to bring John Carew, Owen Hargreaves and Philip Mexes to Div 1 Brighton's Withdean Stadium because of a bug and not because of my elite CM4 abilities? I won't have any of it!

[@GandWizard]

You're so right. These players all did it for you, star-struck by your tactical acumen and man management. These vile rumors have to stop!

[@Zeerse_Chef]

Lots of context is missed from CM4: We were still on dial-up internet, it was expensive for how bad it was, so getting the release day patch was not as easy as now SI/the Collyers only admitted how bad CM4 was years afterwards, their forum mods (because the forum was the main way of trying to interact with SI at the time) refused to accept how bad the bugs were

[@Clayts]

Yeah good context, don’t think it contrasts what I said too much but yeah true.

[@RltchieI]

ADSL broadband came to the market in the late 90s, from 2000 I had 512k & in 2003 when CM4 was released I had 1Mbit ADSL with 2mbit available. I still have all my Pipex emails for some reason, the Solo 1000 service cost £23.44 per month. It was pre steam though which would mean going to the SI site, downloading a patch & then executing it yourself, but it shouldn’t have taken long to download a patch given by this point piracy had started with Napster peaking in 2001 before Metallica & legal challenges took it out. Worst case before broadband you had to wait a month for a PC with a cover disc of the latest patches. Funnily enough I still have my membership approval email for the then Championship Manager Forums dated 7th June 2002, plus an email from an old friend 15th Nov 2003 saying he’d downloaded CM 03/04 off BT saving him £30, he did that purely down to the CM mess. I maintained my record of legitimately buying every SI release dating back to the original CM. I often wonder if my account is still live on the forum, the last email I got was an automated Happy Birthday email in 2011.

[@Writeous0ne]

i like how you said all that likes it's different now 😂

[@bionicgeekgrrl]

I think it was one of the reasons miles took more of a front position, especially after sega acquired them allowing the collyers to go back to work in the background, where they still are today.

[@Touchpadse]

One big issue this yime that I geel a lot of people are ignoring is that this is the first FM with license for the Premier League and the game will be released when the season is pretty much over

[@Clayts]

Yeah it’s not ideal.

[@Draddar]

In the end a march release is same timing as the winter update and everyone is always very keen to start a new save then. You don't see anyone complaining it's ruined because real life season is almost over. In fact a lot of people even return from the short break after getting fed up with the game by january. I honestly don't get why this is such a huge argument. Do people really care what happens/happened IRL when playing FM? In a way it might be even more appealing to try and see how things can be done differently - various game world options allow you to do that.

[@Touchpadse]

@@Draddar when that update usually comes you've already had the game for almost half a year and the update is like a refresh. When the game instead is released at thet time you've missed the part where you don't know what happened up to that point and you don't get to build the team from the start in the same way

[@Draddar]

@@Touchpadse but you can build it from the start with various game modes And my main point is that after winter update no one is saying this is unplayable now because season is almost done. Similar will happen with fm25. People will play with updates databases for now and then when the real game hits it'll be a refresh.

[@Touchpadse]

@@Draddar what I said is that when the update usually comes you've already had the game as the seasons were when it started, when the update comes you can either continue or start new with updated data

[@alanw083]

CM4 was fun. I used to stay up to around 4am playing it with my flatmates. But it was broken. Still remember bringing Dortmund to glory after they'd gone bankrupt.

[@martynhawthorne7294]

Championship manager I remember all the wonder kids that just vanished from the football world Cherno Samba and Freddy adu I’m looking at you

[@GandWizard]

Or never existed, like To Madeira.

[@wdred]

​@@GandWizardMadeira was the guy. Rockets from distance. What a (fake) player!!!!

[@WilhelmUnterharnscheidt]

Supat Rungratsamee

[@apple-on5pq]

Erik Nevland (CM2)

[@djs8024]

im 43 and have been playing championship manager/fm since i was a boy and love the game. However, i think the time has come for someone else to step and give us an alternative. I played LMa,fifa manger etc along the way but nothing compares to cm/fm.

[@VillanFGer86]

Do you remember Ultimate Soccer Manager, LMA Manager etc? I do think it is a pity FM developed a monopoly. In about 1999 I split my time evenly between Ultimate Soccer Manager and Champ Man. Both were very immersion and, if anything, Ultimate Soccer Manager was more fun with the visualisation of the office, the training ground, the stadium etc. It's a pity these competitors just disappeared. Something similar but different would have been great all these years. I stopped playing FM ten years ago because it started to feel like a job

[@jonnyhull7860]

Lma mabager was a quality game would love to see it come bck also premier manager aswell another good game

[@neilroberts171]

Bring back Kevin Thoms

[@3xrstudio]

I’m 39 and have been playing since CM2 I think. Maybe it does need a competitor but not because of this. I don’t think this is a bad move at all. I would rather this than it was released broken. I feel they should however take into account this for FM26 where it’s less of a full title but an update at a cut price. Can’t be having a game for half a season.

[@F1Krazy]

My nan got me CM4 from a charity shop years ago knowing nothing about it, I remember I played it for about five minutes and then realised that every player's history was missing, so you couldn't sign anyone because the AI would always insist they'd "only recently signed" that player. Dunno whether there was a patch or something to fix that but I didn't bother playing it for much longer after that.

[@Barbaryotaku]

CM4 was hilarious. Bad players would dominate if they had good physicals. Imagine a game were pace trumps everything.

[@Clayts]

Could never be FM24 👀

[@GandWizard]

And jumping. 18/19 jumping on a striker meant 15 goals via headers per season.

[@lilgsus4]

I will always remember the names of the most deadly Icelandic duo: Orri Freyr Oksarsson and Johann Porhalsson. 😉

[@GandWizard]

@@lilgsus4 Porhalsson waas the one that came to mind, but I did not know how to type the Th... He got me on non-stop promotions from the Conference League to the First Division, where I was on pole position when approached by Liverpool. Thanks to his goals, I also reached an FA Cup final and a semi-final along the way. Crazy stuff.

[@GandWizard]

Nice bit of history here. Did they get CM4 right? Let's put it this way: I'm still playing it, 22 years later, although it took about 5years after launch for PCs to have enough RAM and CPU power for it to run smoothly if you selected lots of databases.

[@NJTRAF]

As someone who started playing CM93, what I would say is a lot of people skipped CM4 and got CM03/04 instead. I don’t know a single person from my own friend group who bought CM4, we all continued playing CM01/02 😂 Then when CM03/04 came out we bought that instead

[@d-barb172]

That statement re: the delay of CM4. The one that says “we’re not apologising, GFY”? None of us are in any doubt that Miles wrote that, right?

[@Skringle-q3b]

Finally you mentioned Unity (and City Skylines). The story of the last 12 months has been Unity, why is none of the FM community linking Unity problems to the delay of FM25?

[@Clayts]

I guess because we don’t know loads about that, I think people are aware of it but maybe assuming that it’s SI side, or that it was SI that chose to go with unity etc

[@nanookrubsit]

I've been saying they would hit a wall of problems with unity for well over a year now, everyone thought I was crazy.

[@NegaRenGenX2gay2lift]

at the time of the unity disaster, many in the SI Forums had the fear that FM25 would be delayed because of unity

[@Skringle-q3b]

@@Clayts , There has been a lot of KZbin podcasts about the Unity problems, the developer move to Godot due to the fee structure, and the sacking of the CEO and reselling many of their company purchases not focused on gaming - Bellular News is less rage filled news than a lot of people about Unity. But Unity are even now struggling with performance for the technology that caused SI to choose them - UI toolkit

[@Skringle-q3b]

@@Clayts , SI would also have signed contracts with Unity before the Unity management implosion so they can't be held responsible for that. Some angry also mentioned they were employing coders with Unity experience in 2022, they would probably have been working on proof of concept, and engine evaluation, certainly not development of FM2025. In fact at Unite 24, Sports Interactive explained the core game engine remains the C++ code from FM24, and the Unity element is a replacement of the UI/UX, so it would have been very hard to fully start the project until the FM24 core engine was frozen on release. Sadly, the truth is that the move on the front end to unity was always going to be difficult, and the fact that Unity have not been a stable development partner during the year that SI needed to the most help could not have been forecast. So let's hope with the additional time Sport Interactive and Unity can work together to finish UI toolkit with good performance, and we will get a release that shows SI has managed what City Skylines 2 failed, and release a game, that people want to buy, and maybe FM26 will be delayed so we get improvements in the core engine again, and in 10 years time it will be remembered just like CM04, a blip, followed by a game that has just grown and grown!!

[@FM_Console]

CM4 those were the days!

[@lovecm3637]

cm4 was also unplayable on release and had a huge backlash at the time from purchasers. It took several patches to make the game playable but still had many issues on added minor leagues like czech republic or hungary where teams and even goals in matches would dissapear or not get recorded by the match engine

[@Clayts]

Yeah that’s what this vid is about

[@WilhelmUnterharnscheidt]

I remember 4 patches

[@Bowleskov]

I remember that CM4 release. I had a preorder with Electronic Boutique and everytime I went to the store they informed me of the further delay which always seemed to be 2 to 3 weeks. So from a certain POV the release of FM25 looks better. The other game I had that experience with was GTA San Andreas.

[@mt1qua]

They had started working on FM25 before COVID

[@kieronbrown73]

CM4 was a fun a game after the patches. But CM 03/04 was awesome!

[@SunriseRss]

CM4 and it's successor was amazing... Worked in electrical store back then and got it early! Loll

[@mahalajr2000]

Wait. So CM4 was released in March 2003. Then CM 03/04 (my intro into the addictive world of Football Manager) was the next iteration? Odd numbering. I do remember not buying the next year's game because SI and Eidos had a falling out. It wasn't until FM 2007 that I went back to it.

[@Wroot1FM]

Can't agree with you more, what you are saying is so true

[@Gideonsmythe]

I remember CM4, it took the game beyond the capabilities of my PC so it ended up costing me £500 for a new one. Or £1,500 in today's prices.

[@theguichardsadventures3720]

I won the league and champions league with Bristol City back in CM4

[@freddiejohnson6137]

I'll be honest I was still playing CM 01/02 at that time... mainly because I tried the demo and my PC just couldn't cope with it I didn't upgrade until Football Manager 2005. Seems crazy looking back that there was a time that certain PCs would struggle to run the games seeing as now just about any can run them with ease I also still prefer the 2D match engine over the 3D one because it still looks janky. I'll probably skip this new one until it has improved over the next couple of years. Well unless it's given away with Epic games at some point like they all seem to be these days.

[@peterharris-qh3lh]

They need to release an updated database to hold players over until March as would restore Goodwill

[@RltchieI]

I’m trying to recall if it was CM4 that had the bug where if you offered a ridiculous sum say £100m for a player, that club would accept the offer and allow you to discuss terms with the player, then when the player accepted the contract you accepted the deal & then went into the transfer offer and changed the bid to zero you would get the player for free when the transfer went through.

[@Clayts]

Yes it definitely was. Not that I ever did that of course.

[@RltchieI]

I didn’t use that bug either… And it wasn’t long later they released the 03/04 update, which makes you wonder why they just didn’t release one final update for CM the 02/03 season & make 03/04 CM4. Like they could have just released a seasonal update for FM25 & made FM26 this new era game free of bugs. I’m trying to understand where the incentive to buy FM25 is when you’d expect FM26 to slip back into the November slot. Will people invest in a game that’s life cycle is significantly shorter? I like to develop the academy & under 21s as well as manage the senior team so hopefully by the time the game is at the end of its life cycle I have a complete squad made from players I have developed & hopefully winning trophies. I sometimes also like to dabble in international football to keep me as active as possible, like the game I may have to cut things out that I enjoy to reach where I want to be by the time the next game arrives.

[@bionicgeekgrrl]

If they stick to November for fm26 then they will definitely need to cut the price or offer those who bought fm25 a discount of some kind and maybe do things like making what is currently dlc free. It would be a step in the right direction if fm25 is a mess as we all fear. If they don't do something like that they could have a case where very few bother with any future fm games. Now is the time for another company to launch a new competition for fm that forces si to take notice, can anyone manage it?

[@maxmodell6240]

This is the best take on the FM25 delay I've seen

[@montehasspoken]

Bring back TEXT only ;-)

[@colinjohnson-nu1ty]

Remember this well. Difference is we had more of a life back then so we sucked it up and got on with life. 03/04 was worth the wait

[@andybrockbank3027]

I'm speculating that Sega has told them release in March or contract torn up and studio closed down. Given it is suggested that Sega owns SI then an alternate publisher is out of the question. What price Miles Jacobsen being on the scene in April 2025..

[@rneves43]

Is the match engine that crucial? Personally I only have the commentary for the best moments, if I want to watch a game I play FIFA or turn on the TV. I've played these games on and off starting on Championship Manager and the only thing I want is better and more interactions. Let me be Mourinho and call the referee idiot or just talk bs to other managers.

[@DubberRucks]

Sounds like you'd make for some very interesting interviews if rival managers or referees cost you irl 😂

[@rneves43]

@@DubberRucks well, I dont think they wouldnt question my passion 😅

[@Chixiawaves]

damn cm03/04 was my first game than i moved to fm08 (yes i refused to play any other fm untill 08 since cm03/04 was so good) , than moved to fm10 than 13 and now 24 ... i guess im getting old damn ...

[@ianbanks3016]

Let's be honest, it's just been one giant cluster fuck, but they only have themselves to blame. They've managed all of this incredibly poorly. If we're to believe their blog postes they've been working on making the switch to Unity for several years. They imposed their own deadlines and timeline and they just really screwed it up. It's just really poor project management from SI. It did happen before with CM4 (which was still a mess when it was finally released) and the delay led to them splitting from Eidos. I'm sure Sega will want answers about how this has happened, so I'm pretty sure there will be some fall out from this too. Reading comments on social media, the usual response is "well, I'd rather they released a finished game in March", there are no guarantees the game will be 'finished' when it's eventually released (presumably in March), the March deadline is just there so it can sold in this financial year, there are no guarantees you're going to get a 'finished' game. If it's released in anything like the state CM4 was it'll still be a mess.

[@jonnyhull7860]

Ive been playing cm/fm since the amiga days

[@wdred]

Which CM had the set piece creator? Which in concept was a great idea, but failed in execution. It was after the split.

[@dingypt]

I dont see any reason for panic, even if FM25 is canceled. The problem is that in current times (last 5 or so years) many Game Developing Companies (like EA or Ubisoft) are destroying their own games and fan base over raw profit. So the audience (us gamers) are already kind of "on the fence" about these things. Lets remain calm mourinhos, we will keep enjoying FM24 and we will surely have FM 26 in a great form!

[@gammagogeta]

I mean if it coming out in end of March an then again in November, I do not see a point in buying 2 games in the same year. Best just wait until FM26.

[@Aanthanur]

i wait for FM26, it will be what FM25 should have been :D

[@DubberRucks]

Or maybe FM27 when it's all had chance to gel properly lol

[@Numero6dl]

SortitoutSI got its name because of that delay/botched release.

[@stevelewis5787]

The big question is... What football shirt is that? I couldn't spot the team's name, and couldn't find it on Hummels website... :-)

[@Clayts]

@@stevelewis5787 it’s a forward Madison kit from a few years back: www.uksoccershop.com/p-387513/2020-forward-madison-alternate-drip-kit.html

[@SylvanFeanturi]

CM4 was really, really bad... For me, the worst part of abysmal performance, which made the game practically unplayable with more than 1 country at a time. But! ... CM03-04 is to this day one of my favorite entries in the series. So looking forward to FM 26.

[@MescudiBarton]

Recommended specs will come down now they have time to optimise the game

[@doezage]

Why don’t we learn from our mistakes

[@GetAPlaster]

FM25 is probably going to be a bit of a hot mess, and the disappointment of the delayed launch will just be the cherry on top of the bug-filled sundae we’ll all be served in March. But hey, don’t go blaming Sports Interactive! They’ve had to overhaul the game engine to cram in shiny new features, and if they had their way, they’d probably take 2-3 years to bake a fresh, perfect version. Unfortunately, they’ve got a publisher tapping their watch, expecting a new game every year. And let’s be honest, they’re a small team-they can’t juggle making two games at once. So, let’s cut them some slack, brace ourselves for a release that’s got more bugs than a rainforest, and trust that with their expertise, passion, and borderline obsession, they’ll deliver something epic and just as addictive as always in the long run!

[@footy_adventures]

The problem is this didn't need to happen, they have been working on unity for so many years now. They knew it could have just waited for the unity outlay until next year but they chose to do it this year and thus they have created they're own problem on top of all of the other "Overhauls" that really feel like a middle finger to the player base that currently exists to dumb the game down and attempt to move into a more console style game and fanbase.

[@testervee4110]

why does every football related youtuber have this background???

[@mw56101]

So they've done this twice and f'd it up twice, seems they've learnt nothing

[@TheSilentScreamX]

Chances are this FM is going to suck. Every new game when they made major changes has sucked. From text based to 2D and 2D to 3D, the first games that did it all sucked. Fortunately back in the day we had CM01/02 to fall back on which is honestly still the GOAT of football manager games. These days we still have FM24. The delay doesn't bother me much. I've gotta say, the only "frustration" I'm really seeing is from content creators. The overall community seems to be mostly rational and accepting of the delay. Obviously it's not our source of income, so that makes sense.

[@Clayts]

Don’t disagree with much you’ve said but the last part, that’s wild. Just read my comments section for the past two weeks or any fm post on x or Reddit and it certainly isn’t rational or accepting 😂

[@michaelebeling5269]

Just remember, Sports Interactive brought this on themselves. There is no way they started working on the game change back when they made the announcement that FM25 would be the switch to Unity. They had to be already working on the process of creating FM25 for at least a year beforehand. SI also picked FM25 as the version that would be the change. They mentioned "tight deadlines" to meet for this version yet they are the ones that picked the date for release. They could've set the change for FM26 or 27. This falls on them for being incompetent in getting the game ready and they deserve no free passes if the game is buggy in March. Finally, they obviously did not learn their lessons from 2004 because they are here again with the same issues.

[@AucklandMag]

oh my days CM4 was such a shit show. CM 03/04 was brilliant though. I still play that, but you have to use the speeder program.

[@Veaseify]

If you don't have a load of playable leagues CM 03/04 runs perfectly fine, I never got the speeder to actually speed up the processing time, just the speed of the game simulation.

[@AucklandMag]

@@Veaseify I find it painfully slow even with one league running. It's not my pc either, as it's pretty powerful. The speeder gives it a nice little boost.

[@VillaFanDan92]

It would have been disastrous for their PR, but I would have respect the bollocks for them to come out and say "No apologies, you'll get it when it's done" for this game, like back with CM4 lmao

[@anardi7112]

i dont know why its so hard to understand that the developers just couldn't get it done and should be sacked. probably because they didnt ever bring in football ppl and just it nerds and that wouldnt make any sense. what skin do you use?

[@ianboulton4838]

Sorry, you think football people can make a game and professional developers should be sacked? Really? Are you an idiot or just a very poor grade troll?

[@konjecture]

FM KZbinrs now have to find a real-life job for a few months. How cruel.

[@Clayts]

I’ve been a teacher for ten years 😂

[@ollydavis2495]

Jealously dont look good on you

[@konjecture]

@@ollydavis2495 Oh, it does. Especially when a freaking game gets delayed and everyone makes videos about it like it’s the apocalypse 😁.

[@konjecture]

@@Clayts Good for you. I hope one day you can make a sustainable KZbin career so that you don’t have to be a teacher anymore 👍.

[@Clayts]

And you’re… watching those vids because you… don’t like them I suppose. Right right. Btw this video isn’t doom and gloom apocalypse in nature, quite the opposite i would say but I’m guessing you’ve just looked at the thumbnail etc and decided that. It’s cool, all good.

[@Sgeeeeeee]

Just stop milking this topic, everyone is sick of it

[@Clayts]

Milking the topic of CM4? Literally not seen anybody else make a vid about it. Tell me you didn’t watch without saying it, weird guy.

[@Sgeeeeeee]

@@Clayts dont pretend. You know its about the whole FM25 delay drama, like 7th Video on it already

[@Clayts]

Literally first video since the delay but go off king 👑

[@Sgeeeeeee]

@@Clayts i sure will, but hey keep farming interactions

[@pbsmoothie7281]

Sick of it yet here you are. You always have the option of just not watching you know 😂 Clayts (or anyone else making content about the delay of FM25) isn't forcing you to watch their stuff, you are choosing to do so. If it makes you so unhappy, rather watch something else than hate on the creator. Weird angle to take man.