F1 Manager Developer Announces Losses, Redundancies

A shame but probably related to the number of their potential customers who entirely ignored Manager 23 because of how they utterly abandoned everyone who bought 22.

Sadly I bet it's not the people who made that decision that are getting cut.

When I heard how incomplete F1M22 was, I threw any idea of purchasing it in the bin - sale or no.

I am sure I wasn't alone. This is the result of that decision. Sad to see people lose their jobs (although surely not the right people), but I can't be upset at this outcome. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

This is not the Fortnite audience that will roll up once a week to spend $20 on an awful skin that took 15 minutes in Blender to **** out - money-grabbing of that caliber generally doesn't fly in this market.

it means you failed somewhere, maybe you should have listened to the community you sell the product?! not buyer's fault, you are treated how you treat!

Whatever F1 Manager 2024 does I wont be buying it. I bought 22 which was ok considering the manager genre is not existent for officially licensed F1.

2023 felt copy and paste, even to the point where Hamilton's team radio is talking about keep pushing etc.

Lots of silly design choices in the game where you have to keep clicking for the sake of clicking.

Well, the fact that the corporate world finally discovered that what goes around invariably comes around is indeed mindblowing.

The first game had potential but soon I realised the company to may not be all that best in hearing the consumers, which influenced a lot in my decision to skip the 2023 release.

This and the fact of the game being a somehow worsened copycat of the 2022 release and the fact of them loving to speak about things outside video-games themes, which they shouldn't..

Sad for who was let go, especially because in most cases they are not the ones behind the bad decisions but if Frontier wants the franchise to succeed, may be time to hear more and speak less.

I said it before, a single release with long term support would have been best. Motorsport Manager still rocks with mods

"Frontier has previously stated that it will continue to perfect the F1 Manager formula in coming years." And that's the problem. They need to step it up immediately and not trickle in new features. I didn't buy 23 after they attempted to abandon 22. Why should I trust a company that abandons a game after two months to improve on their yearly releases with no new features? Maybe I would've bought 23 if they had F2 cars.

They're also ridiculously anti-modding, won't even let people ask if mods even exist in their Discord during the time I was in it (around 22's lifespan). Just felt so restrictive that I didn't bother staying. Maybe if the developers had actually put in effort for 22, we wouldn't have to talk about mods in the first place!

To put it shortly, I won't buy if they won't improve the game. You'd think for the studio behind Plant Coaster, they'd put effort into details. (And while the Team Switching is a nice touch for 23, would've been nice to have it in 22. But hey, I guess the developers "wanted to improve the game engine" or whatever their initial excuse was for not fixing game-breaking bugs in 22, before they suddenly did.)

_ShadowWolfe said:

"Frontier has previously stated that it will continue to perfect the F1 Manager formula in coming years." And that's the problem. They need to step it up immediately and not trickle in new features. I didn't buy 23 after they attempted to abandon 22. Why should I trust a company that abandons a game after two months to improve on their yearly releases with no new features? Maybe I would've bought 23 if they had F2 cars.

They're also ridiculously anti-modding, won't even let people ask if mods even exist in their Discord during the time I was in it (around 22's lifespan). Just felt so restrictive that I didn't bother staying. Maybe if the developers had actually put in effort for 22, we wouldn't have to talk about mods in the first place!

To put it shortly, I won't buy if they won't improve the game. You'd think for the studio behind Plant Coaster, they'd put effort into details. (And while the Team Switching is a nice touch for 23, would've been nice to have it in 22. But hey, I guess the developers "wanted to improve the game engine" or whatever their initial excuse was for not fixing game-breaking bugs in 22, before they suddenly did.)

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It's a studio that also made Elite Dangerous, no modding there... so no skinning mods (but you can micro purchase them) halfassed expansions and desertion of the console market once the money was in the bank.
So really, Frontier Developments handling a motorsports game (which isn't really their thing) isn't doomed to failure but I don't believe they'll get the most out of it... especially if they continue to hold their heads in the clouds and ignore the motorsports fans.

Lack of custom teams killed any interest I had for this game instantly.

I got a suggestion for them to cut “annual operating costs by up to 20%”: start with stop paying Irideto for Denuvo DRM.

Rot Teufel said:

I got a suggestion for them to cut “annual operating costs by up to 20%”: start with stop paying Irideto for Denuvo DRM.

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For the life of me I still can't understand how developers still waste time and resources in anti piracy measures. Developers started that in the 80's and they have been loosing every single battle until nowadays. The only thing that made decrease piracy in a meaningful way was steam making more convenient to have a legit copy of the game than a pirated one, and reducing the extortionate prices of the games had for a very long time. No anti piracy system has been undefeated ever.

This game developers should had kept developing the base 22 game and release the 23 season as a dlc, that way their 22 game users wouldn't feel betrayed right now. They got too greedy and wanted to ask for full price for the 23 game and they got burned.

Now by firing people that had nothing to do with the issue they are going to have a 24 game that is going to be a flop, because the 23 game players are going to feel betrayed and with a shorter amount of developers their 24 game is going to be crippled in some way.

That's ironic, how the wild capitalism is killing companies that could have been profitable and financially stable otherwise.

Haven't tried this game, but just during my morning break right now found a dusty Grand Prix Manager DVD in my garage. Definitely I'll give it a try on one of my older PC's with Win 10 installations.
I don't think GPM dealt with financial crisis, as I recall I lured several of my uni mates into the world of simracing via this route in the mid-90s.

Sorry for off-topic, but just dewy fresh personal experience, felt the urge to share when clicking my RD link and observing this article

TRASGU said:

No anti piracy system has been undefeated ever.

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There are many Denuvo games which haven't been cracked at all.

It's out on PC Gamepass now. I tried it out this morning and it's so similar to 22. I'm glad I held off on a purchase.

It's a licensed version of Motorsport Manager, and not particularly engaging. It should have been priced at £20 at best, and that's being generous.

Sorry that people have to lose their jobs but as a dev they suck so won't be losing any sleep over it. F1 Manager is the most plain faced cash grab I've ever seen. Hope it closes Frontier for good.

See also Elite Dangerous and how that DLC got abandoned. Terrible devs. Go Rot.

TRASGU said:

For the life of me I still can't understand how developers still waste time and resources in anti piracy measures. Developers started that in the 80's and they have been loosing every single battle until nowadays. The only thing that made decrease piracy in a meaningful way was steam making more convenient to have a legit copy of the game than a pirated one, and reducing the extortionate prices of the games had for a very long time. No anti piracy system has been undefeated ever.

Click to expand...

Simply, thanks to Anti tamper and Secure DLC it helps quite a lot in early sales.
Then, if the profit are enough for keeping renoving DRM license, they keep it.
Other wise they remove it (not on all platform) after a while, because there's no profit.

Anyway as seen with Securom and Starforce, there's no garantee that those solution will work on modern hardware.

Anyway what it's worst, it's sell older games using craked exes keeping the scene group name (see the recent case of Manhunt and Midnight Club 2 by Rockstar, using scene obsolete exe wich activate in game triggers they build in game), since they don't know anymore how to remove DRM.

But thanks to Steam Deck, i like to see that many players have taken coscience and start to mumble about DRM offline issues.

football manager is the gold standard for management games, until f1 manager gets close to that it will always feel shallow

Hello my fast friends.
Maybe they would have examined a few Formula 1 managers before they put their game on the market. A comparison by Microprose's Grand Prix Manager with their product would probably have shown where the error lies.
Content.
Content that invites you to continue playing.
Content that has surprises in store for the player.
It's not enough to simply create a game in which you manage a team over a period of 10 years. Always driving on the same race tracks, not being able to build his own team and only having a rudimentary connection with the racing universe.
Grand Prix Manager had a collection of, I think there were 30 original race tracks.
Race tracks came and went over the course of the game.
Rules were completely overhauled, you had your own team. In the successor Grand Prix Manager 2, also from Microprose, you could manage your team from Geoff Crammond's Grand Prix 2 Racing Game.
Yes, folks, that really happened. This doesn't have to be invented. You could manage your team and actually drive the season yourself.
This is very old hat.
There, too, they had the “great” camera settings that you know from television broadcasts.
I don't even want to start writing about modding right now. It was a given that you could do that. And there was no time frame. It was open.
Then there was a Formula 1 manager from Ascaron.
Even that was vastly superior to the Frontier thing.
He didn't take himself too seriously.
Casual sayings and the like made the manager appear lively. But it was also full of all these technical things like exploiting gray areas down to the nanometer, bribing inspectors, etc.
All of these managers are easily 25 years old, but had a scope that was much larger, more thoughtful and more varied.
When Motorsport Manager came out I was thrilled.
Endurance, GT Sport and Open Wheeler. Your own team, changing rules, changing race tracks, drivers who believe they are gods just because they were able to win a race, involvement of team bosses in decisions that affect the season, sustainable gameplay, etc. Motorsport Manager, Grand Prix Manager, Grand Prix Manager 2 and the Manager of Ascaron have all of this.
So what does Frontier's manager have?
A license. Rudimentary touches on the motorsport scene and optics. That was it.
For a niche product this is not enough.
No reason to play it for more than one season.
If the licensed glossy manager now has even less content than the small product converted from the phone, I don't have to be a qualified finance expert with 30 doctorates to realize that it will flop.
As someone once said.
Until university, 1+1 is two. After graduating from university, 1+1 may be two.
But that's not certain. You have to do some research first.
And the fact that employees are fired if a company is doing poorly or expectations are not met is the course of life.
This has been going on for as long as there have been people giving other people jobs.
Who would pay employees, pay for buildings, pay for equipment if money isn't generated somehow?
Take off the rose-colored glasses and look past the monitor. That's called living.
Anyone who is afraid or shocked by such things should become an undertaker.
This is crisis-proof. People always die.