F1 Manager is abandonware 2months after release

[Strudders]

 

Summary

A Reddit post from the developers of F1 manager have stated that there is to be one last patch to fix bugs in it's game but have also said that some remaining known bugs will not be fixed. The game was released on the 30th Aug 2022 and is now effectively abandoned.

 

 

Quotes

Quote

After discussing all the reports of some cars not unlapping under the Safety Car at length with our dev team, we can now confirm that this will not be addressed further in F1 Manager 2022. After investigation, the team have established that changes to this area would require significant gameplay alterations that are just not within scope for this game. However, as our team increase their focus towards future F1 Manager games, we have highlighted this as an important player-reported topic to address going forward. 

 

My thoughts

A game that was released less than 3 months ago has now effectively been abandoned with known gameplay bugs. How is this acceptable and can I get a refund for a game that will never be fixed?!

 

 

Sources

 

 

[heimdali]

I would tell them to refund and if need be, have my bank withdraw the money from them.  If they want the money back, they can sue me, and they're neither likely to do that, nor their chances can be good because they delivered a broken product and refuse to fix it.

 

If I had been able to, I would have withdrawn the money I payed for Elite Dangerous after they killed it on xbox, but the payment was too long ago.  Frontier Development doesn't even care to answer my emails, that company sucks.

 

[suicidalfranco]

if it's not online and doesn't have game breaking bugs, forgivable as the game can still be enjoyed. If it's the opposite, scum move and hopefully that serves as lesson to anyone considering the next release. 

[porina]

Do correct me if I'm off, but this sounds like a time limited relevancy game, like other sport ones that get refreshed as a "new" game each year. When it comes to new content it seems fair that would not go beyond the season. Support beyond that sounds like would be limited to keeping it runnable e.g. due to changes in sales platforms or whatever happens to Windows.

 

Actually would that be a good comparison? It's like Windows going out of mainstream support into extended support. Mainstream support can include new features or major changes. Extended support is more like bug and security fixes.

[tim0901]

2 hours ago, Strudders said:

A game that was released less than 3 months ago has now effectively been abandoned with known gameplay bugs. How is this acceptable and can I get a refund for a game that will never be fixed?!

Sorry, but your outrage at the short support period here is kinda hilarious considering that this was the norm not that long ago in the pre-Steam era. Unless your game happened to be graced with an expansion pack, or a patch that was distributed via some obscure online forum, what you got at release was what you were stuck with. Bugs and all.

 

Not to excuse their behaviour or anything - it absolutely sucks that they aren't going to fix these known bugs - but this is hardly a new problem and just goes to show how spoiled we are these days with devs supporting games for years after release.

 

As others have mentioned though, this is a yearly release game. Long-term support is just never going to happen. And if what they're saying is true - that fixing these bugs would require "significant gameplay alterations" (aka, lots of development time) I can very much believe that the team that's left supporting this year's game simply isn't big enough to make such changes, as most of the developers will already be working on the 2023 release.

 

On top of that, F1 Manager is hardly what I'd describe as a mainstream AAA title - there are only 4000 reviews for it on Steam. As such I could very much believe that it simply wouldn't be cost-effective to fix major problems at this stage. And that sucks, but that's business.

[Quackers101]

its worse with how it is between development stages and full releases on these platforms now.

Before nearly everything was early access titles, now some want to release it but still be in early access without the label.

Should be more paths to go down for these sort of games. But as seen on steam, its hard to get known if you are not an AAA title or the like, or to be spammed to the top. If you fail either your EA launch or full launch... you will get stuck being unknown etc, which can really suck for some games that are very good and better done than some wild recommended spam.

[Strudders]

I'm hear you guys about the sort of seasonal nature of games like this, and new yearly features are kinda part of this model of buiniess, but is fixing game/immersion breaking bugs is not within the scope of this game developers anymore? Do we actually believe that is an acceptable answer that gaming the community should accept?

 

If I buy a game that is ment to be a digital recreaction of IRL sports then I do expect the rules of the sport to be observed in the game.

[Ydfhlx]

Yet another reason to not buy games with known game-breaking bugs.

[tim0901]

2 minutes ago, Strudders said:

I'm hear you guys about the sort of seasonal nature of games like this, and new yearly features are kinda part of this model of buiniess, but is fixing game/immersion breaking bugs is not within the scope of this game developers anymore? Do we actually believe that is an acceptable answer that gaming the community should accept?

 

If I buy a game that is ment to be a digital recreaction of IRL sports then I do expect the rules of the sport to be observed in the game.

You're mistaking us believing that we should accept this and us believing nothing will happen because corporations are corporations and everything they do is dictated by money.

 

Idealogically yes, I think we all agree it's not right and that they should fix this. But this isn't fantasy land, this is the real world. The place where EA released the exact same FIFA game (with an updated roster) four years in a row for the Switch, because there aren't enough people buying it for them to care to update it more. Do people think that's shitty? Yes. Have people been complaining about it? Yes. Has it resulted in any changes? Don't be ridiculous.

 

What does fixing F1 manager do for Frontier? Cost them money. What does not fixing it do? Probably cost them a lot less - you'll lose some future sales from the poor reviews, but they've probably already sold the majority of the copies they were expecting to sell. It might have an impact on next year's version, but boycotts rarely have a significant impact on overall sales, and it's not like F1 Manager is a top-seller anyway.

[Quackers101]

not tech news, very common things that happens?

but it does suck if they want to just push x number just to try and get it "fixed" in the next release. A bit like the Dirt games, only they get nuked instead... which sucks.

[TetraSky]

They posted an update

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/f1-manager-2022-devs-say-that-updates-will-continue-after-player-backlash

 

"As of a few hours ago, Frontier say that this is all just one big misunderstanding"