Smite 2 studio lays off workers and drops all other games to focus on the unfinished MOBA - Related to functionality, all, cancelled, studio, workers

Football Manager 25 has been cancelled

Put your red and white scarf back on the coat rack, football friends. The match has been called off. The entire season, in fact. Football Manager 25 has been cancelled because it has not met a high enough standard in time for its intended release next month, . Anyone who pre-ordered the game will be given a refund, they say.

"Following extensive internal discussion and careful consideration with SEGA, we have made the difficult decision to cancel Football Manager 25 and shift our focus to the next release," mentioned the developers in a statement. "Whilst many areas of the game have hit our targets, the overarching player experience and interface is not where we need it to be... we’re too far away from the standards you deserve.

"We could have pressed on, released FM25 in its current state, and fixed things down the line - but that’s not the right thing to do. We were also unwilling to go beyond a March release as it would be too late in the football season to expect players to then buy another game later in the year."

This other game is a reference to the next instalment, Football Manager 26. The devs are now just working on that one instead.

Sports Interactive have previously hyped up the now-binned sideline shouter, pitching it as a fresh start for the series. It would be "for the first time in decades, a true sequel" with a new graphics engine, revamped UI, women's football, enhanced animations, the works. It revealed a short delay to its release date in November 2024. But just one week after that it was delayed again until March 2025.

Now, it's not happening at all, and that fresh start will have to kick off next football season. It's a surprisingly late cancellation, and a somewhat last minute announcement. Sports Interactive couldn't tell fans the bad news until now, they say, because lawyers expressed so.

"Due to stakeholder compliance, including legal and financial regulations, today was the earliest date that we could issue this statement," they stated.

As for getting your money back, if you pre-ordered you'll get automatically refunded in full through whatever platform you bought it on, so long as it's an "official SEGA-approved retailer." That list includes Steam, Epic, Humble and a bunch of other places. It's only bad news if you bought your tickets to this big game from a CD Keys tout. Either way, take off your red and white bobble hat and come back inside for a cuppa. No, I don't know what team you support. It's the red and white one. They're all red and white, aren't they? That's the colour of football.

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Switch 2 patent seemingly confirms previously rumoured Joy-Con functionality

Switch 2 might have been officially revealed, but there's still a whole lot we don't know about it. And while Nintendo is staying stubbornly tightlipped until April, a newly surfaced patent appears to confirm at least a few previously reported details the corporation has so far only teased.

Mostly, we're talking Joy-Cons here, with early reports having claimed Switch 2's detachable controllers would include a few new tricks not seen in those of the original console. That starts with magnets, with Switch 2's Joy-Cons have long been rumoured to use magnets to attach to the console instead of the finicky rails system used previously.

Which brings us to Nintendo's newly unearthed game controller patent, initially filed in August 2023 and . "This game controller is detachably mounted to a body device that has a recess," it reads, "that comprises a first magnet and a second magnet at the bottom of the recess, and that can execute game processing."

Furthermore, the patent gives some additional insight into how the magnets have been implemented to avoid randomly dropping off at inconvenient intervals. "The first button and the second button are provided in the longitudinal direction in the top surface of the protrusion," Nintendo writes. "The first button and the second button are to be pressed by a user. The first button is attracted to the first magnet by a magnetic force. The second button is attracted to the second magnet by a magnetic force."

Admittedly, the inclusion of magnets isn't much of a revelation - Switch 2's reveal trailer already suggested as much - but Nintendo hasn't actually made it official. And it's a similar story for built-in Joy-Con mouse functionality, another rumoured feature for Switch 2. January's reveal trailer certainly lent credence to those earlier reports, what with it including a controller sliding suspiciously around on its side, but, again, it's a feature not yet made official.

It is, if nothing else, an interesting reminder that's there's still so much to learn about Nintendo's new console following a reveal that was light on just about everything. Beyond, that is, a general glimpse of Switch 2's Switch-but-more-so aesthetic, and a new Mario Kart that's managed to illicit chatter as wide ranging as 'Could this possibly be open world?!' right through to 'What on earth have they done to Donkey Kong?!'.

Unfortunately, no solid answers to the many questions we have about Switch 2 will likely come until April's Nintendo Direct - which will hopefully finally include the Captain Rainbow revival we've all been waiting for. Until then, feel free to direct your gaze elsewhere on Eurogamer for a refresher of everything we currently know about Switch 2. You can probably add 'almost definitely magnets' and 'mouse, eh?' to that list now too.

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Smite 2 studio lays off workers and drops all other games to focus on the unfinished MOBA

Hi-Rez Studios have laid off an unknown number of the studio's employees, only one month after launching MOBA sequel Smite 2 as a free-to-play beta. It looks like management has cut at least 20-30 jobs and the full number is likely higher. As a result, three other games that have been long-running staples of the studio will no longer get any updates. Smite, Paladins, and Rogue enterprise will have nobody to man the code cannons, so they're being left to gather cobwebs from now on. Although they will remain playable.

"In light of challenging market conditions, Hi-Rez is implementing a reduction in force," the studio presented in a Discord message spotted by Dexerto. "Smite 2 will continue to be the focus of the newly streamlined operations. These reductions should enable a steady flow of new content and the continued development of Smite 2, while aligning team costs with revenues."

Hi-Rez haven't stated the exact number of people they've axed from the workplace. But a Reddit megathread of workers affected includes 23 people at the time of writing, while Smite YouTuber "Hayzer" estimates 50-60 people have been hit. Among those hit are programmers, UI artists, QA folk, marketing people, and producers - a full grab-bag of roles.

This comes just four months after the last round of job cuts at the firm, which itself followed a round of cuts in June 2023 (that one saw around 30 people made unemployed). All these emnployees have been shown the door to give Smite 2 "sustainability", -Rez management. The CEO of Hi-Rez, Stewart Chisam, deleted his social media account on X in the aftermath of this week's layoffs.

As for all the non-Smite 2 games, the studio is still keeping Paladins up even if it won't see any further updates. "We plan to keep the servers and currently available content running as long as possible to allow you to continue to enjoy the game," they say. The first Smite will get the same treatment for now. The previous layoffs saw these two games being staffed by "small teams supporting light updates". But now it seems even those small teams are not wanted by the corporation.

I'm no business bro, but things don't look good for Hi-Rez in general. Aside from the continuing self-bleeding of talent from the studio, they've now gone all-in on a MOBA that frankly isn't that exciting (RPS in peace), who noted that Valve's Deadlock is already halfway up its own lanes and looking quite beefy.

It continues to be a hard few years for workers in the games industry. We keep a tag that tracks recent layoffs. But to be honest, it's hard to catch and findings on them all. Especially when companies like BioWare refuse to speak in plain language about their job cuts.

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