Footy manager devs on Italian league patches

By Tom Bramwell Published 31 October, 2006

Will they? Won't they?

As you'll know if you follow Italian football, last week was a good one for Juventus, Lazio and Fiorentina - and we're not talking about what happened on the pitch.

Because last week the Italian Olympic Committee decided to reduce the penalties meted out to each club in the wake of this summer's match-fixing scandal. Juventus remain in Serie B, but see their points penalty reduced from 17 to 9, while Fiorentina got four points back and Lazio got eight.

There was one group of people for whom the news came too late though - the developers of football management titles, with Sports Interactive, Beautiful Game Studios and Codemasters having already delivered their 2007 efforts to market in the preceding months.

With this in mind, we had a nose round to find out if patches will be forthcoming. After all, in a genre that craves realism, it wouldn't be much fun tasting defeat on account of redundant points-deductions.

First to respond was publisher Eidos, whose Beautiful Game Studios-authored Championship Manager 2007 is out now on PC. "This issue will indeed be addressed," we were told. "We have a data update planned for early in the New Year which will reflect all the major changes which have happened since release. Should we need to patch the game in the interim period, we will also look in to pushing any major world changes through in that update," a spokesperson told us.

The situation might be a bit different for Codemasters' LMA Manager 2007 though, with the publisher telling us this lunchtime that while "there's a PC patch due quite soon", which "might" see the change made, a lack of requests from fans means that "it's not in the plan for Xbox 360 and PS2". So if you want it, make sure to let Codemasters know - they're a friendly bunch, and will probably listen.

Finally, this evening, we spoke to Sports Interactive MD Miles Jacobson about the possibility of a patch for Football Manager 2007, which swept into the UK charts at number one last week. "No firm decision has been made yet," he told us, "but we've got a pretty good record of supporting our games in the past, so it's not likely to be any different for Football Manager 2007."

Unfortunately, like AC Milan, whose penalty stayed the same, we were left hanging by the telephone when it came to Electronic Arts, which releases FIFA Manager 07 this Friday, with representatives yet to get back to us.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (7) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Yossarian #1 5 years ago

    the ideal patch would be one that implements the reductions on the day they were awarded

    without the -17 I'd be 31 points clear at the top of Serie B with a game in hand.

  • SomaticSense #2 5 years ago

    Seriously, what is the point in handing out a punishment if all they are going to do is keep reducing it maybe to the point of zero? If those 4 clubs really did what they did (and they must've been found guilty to have had any punishment at all) then ALL of them should have been relegated and have massive - I'm talking more than 17 fucking points - reductions.
    That plus the measly 5 game ban for Mijalovic makes footballs governing bodies look like a bunch of caving pussies.

    Football's going to the dregs I tell ya.

  • T4RG4 #3 5 years ago

    Ha - SI not confirming they'll release a patch. Of course they will, they've broken a few things yet again this season. Just dont take too long to fix the goalie, regen and training bugs SI ;-(

  • Stickman #4 5 years ago

    EA will release the patch for £5.

  • Yossarian #5 5 years ago

    I'm sick of debating the whole Calciopoli thing, but yes, if you follow it in detail all of the clubs involved should probably have been relegated (although it's not the clubs, per se, and certainly not the players, that are at fault). as things stand, Juventus are the only club that have made significant steps towards restructuring management etc. and making an effort to change (they are also the most culplable, or at least the most obviously culpable given that the limited wiretaps that did occur were based predominantly in Turin). as it is, they are also the only club that received meaningful punishment (the fact that Milan are somehow in the Champions League in spite of everything is an affront to football).

  • marc_si #6 5 years ago

    "Ha - SI not confirming they'll release a patch"

    We very rarely confirm patch release dates in advance of them coming out - the reason behind this is simply that if we announced a date and then found a problem in testing the day before we'd be left with either releasign a flawed patch (which is unacceptable) or delaying the patch beyond the announced date (which would annoy the heck out of people).

    For this reason we'll continue to be somewhat 'mysterious' about patch release dates until we're 99.9% certain that they can be achieved.

    We will as always support our products to the best of our abilities.

    PS> Many thanks for the support and feedback given by everyone so far for FM2007

  • T4RG4 #7 5 years ago

    "We have a data update planned for early in the New Year which will reflect all the major changes which have happened since release. Should we need to patch the game in the interim period, we will also look in to pushing any major world changes through in that update,"

    I didnt say you should provide a specific date, I can see why that'd be a little bit silly. What I was moaning at was the suggestion that only a data update is planned for early NY, and that SHOULD it need a patch in the interim perdiod...

    IMO it does need a patch in the interim period because of the points mentioned previously. It's a great game, best of the management bunch but these latest bugs with the latest release should really be patched confidently sooner rather than later no? I'm sure you agree but just play safe )) Whilst not as bad as your rivals, the same thing happens every single release :-/

    Bugs will often go through undetected, but to say its rather annoying for the buying public to spot relatively large and often very obvious problems shortly after release is not a good reflection on the QA process (at Sega?) is an annoyance that people are getting used to. Hell, I just wanna start a long term game without the mentioned things biting my ass ))
    Edited by 1 at 01/11/06 @ 12:06