Chinese fans thrash Football Manager on Steam

Bottom of the table user review score after the omission of Chinese language version.

Football Manager fans in China aren't happy at the moment, and they're making their frustrations known by posting negative user reviews for this year's iteration on Steam, resulting in an all-time low user score for the series on Valve's digital platform.

It all boils down to their annoyance at the perceived backtracking on promises made by Sports Interactive's Miles Jacobson back in 2011, when he said that they'd need at least 20,000 of the people who pirated the game in China to purchase it instead before they could contemplate a full Chinese translation. As far as they're concerned that number has now been reached, and they cited SteamSpy data as their evidence.

Alas it's not that simple, and Jacobson has since pointed out that he has access to more accurate information and that the 20K target mentioned five years ago still hasn't been met. He said on Twitter:

"I made a commitment in 2011, which would have been for that year's version of the game. It didn't happen then. It also still hasn't happened. We did not sell 20k more copies of FM16 in China than FM12. So at no point have I lied or broken a promise."

"I know the exact authentication figures in China. SteamSpy figures are incorrect by up to 60 per cent."

That, however, is not the end of it, and publisher Sega has stepped in with a promise to provide a Chinese version of the game:

"SEGA have begun work on translating Football Manager 2017 and Football Manager Touch 2017 into Traditional Chinese. SEGA are also considering simplified Chinese options. At this moment, there is no solid release date for the localised versions but we would like to reassure our Chinese fan base that a version is coming."

As it stands Football Manager 2017 still boasts a terrible user score on Steam, but at least fans in China are going to be able to play the game in Traditional Chinese (while the preferred simplified Chinese version remains under consideration).

We've currently got our own armchair manager guiding his team to the top of the league, so expect our review of this year's entry to drop in the next couple of days ahead of the game's launch on November 4.