A hard left turn.
F1 Manager 2022, which—if your memory stretches back that far—you might recall released on August 30, will no longer be releasing major updates after its next one. In a post to the game’s subreddit, a Frontier community manager said that, “To ensure upcoming F1 Manager projects realise their potential,” the game’s next scheduled update will be the “last significant update that addresses player-reported feedback, or suggested changes and additions”. The community was not thrilled.
“Any potential updates following this would be minor patches that do not noticeably affect gameplay,” continues the community manager’s post, and “Key reports and requests around F1 Manager 2022 from the community that are yet to be resolved” will instead be taken forward and “prioritised as we create future iterations in this franchise”. Further posts from Frontier on the subreddit even describe specific, ongoing issues that won’t be fixed in this game but will be addressed in future releases.
It would have been better not to say that last bit at all. It turns out that telling people you’re still paying attention to their complaints, but only so you can fix them in the next game, isn’t much of a crowd-pleaser. Already the subreddit is awash with fans decrying the decision, pledging not to buy another Frontier game, and pleading with the company to reverse the move.
A complaint from user xford, who says they started out “pretty forthright that I thought they’d continually improve the game,” but now believes the game to be a “a disappointment and frankly a terrible way to launch a series,” does a good job of summing up the disappointment (and with a lot less all-caps cursing than some other complaints).
It’s a remarkably quick turnaround for a game as generally well-liked as F1 Manager 2022, and fans have been quick to point out the inherent weirdness of ending significant updates for the game before the real-life F1 2022 season is even finished. Nevertheless, Frontier seems to be dead-set on shifting its development focus onto future games once the next update is released.
It’s a shame. We rather liked F1 Manager 2022, giving it 79% in our review and even declaring it more interesting than watching actual F1. For the devs to pump the brakes so hard on the game less than two months after it came out is an unexpected and undesired shift for a game that felt like it had potential, and I can’t imagine it’ll predispose many people to pick up the next game when it comes out.
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