Suddenly, game won't load any new save file based on older ones

Hi

I've been playing as BK Häcken in Sweden and am currently in September 2023. So, almost at the end of my second season.

Everything had been going great, when towards the end of August, the game processing time got virtually unplayable. Wait times of 20-40 seconds went to 20,30 or even 40 minutes. Sometimes just to progress the game by a few hours within the same day. There was also slow-down opening certain pages, like Home, Scouting and Transfers.  I ended up doing a clean install of the game and verified the game files, everything seemed good. This didn't really solve the issue, but as I kept playing on my most recent save things started improving somewhat after a few days in September. I kept playing and saving to separate files, just in case. 

This is when the nightmare starts. The game crashes, I go to load up my most recent save (Sep 15) and after the loading bar fills I get a pop-up saying "The save game could not be loaded". I go backwards and try the other saves, same result. I eventually manage to load a save from Sep 1. I believe this might've been the last save before I re-installed.

However, the problem is not solved because I quickly find out that any progress on that file will render future save files unable to load as well. Same things that happened to my initial attempt to keep playing. It seems like the only thing I can do to move the game forward, save and still be able to load up that save is to go on holiday. I can't actively play and progress the game without being on a holiday though, so the problem continues once I get back.

This is the situation even for older save files as well. I went all the way back to June 2022. Over a year back in time. Same thing, it loads up, but any progress will render any new save files based off of it unable to load.  Which is bs, because ofc I didn't do all of that in one sitting. All those future saves between then and now were based off of progress made based on those older save files.

Initially I thought there was something wrong with the save files, but now it's starting to look more like an issue with the game. I just don't know what.

As a last resort I completely re-installed the game and even removed the entire save game folder structure as well the AppData folders with cache and preferences again, to force it to generate new ones. I started a new game, moved a few days ahead and saved. It loaded up fine. I grabbed my original Sep 1 and Sep 15 save files and put them back there. Same result. Sep 15 doesn't load up, Sep 1 loads up but I'm unable to progress if I actually want to be able to load any future saves.

I'm out of ideas. I could really use some help here. Anyone seen or heard anything like this? 

Ps. No skins. I believe everything is standard, other than the in-game editor.

Hi

Sorry to see you have issues anything like this has to be reported to SI mate on their bugs forum they will want you to load the save game and give details of the crash dumps too. Good luck

cheers

https://community.sigames.com/bugtracker/football-manager-2024-early-access-bugs-tracker/crash-technical-and-performance-issues/getting-support-for-crash-and-tech-issues-r19253/ 

Thanks for the advice. I sent them a ticket. However, I've also through my own trial and errors managed to get around it, although now I have a new issue.  

I thought I'd updated this topic for anybody with a similar issue that finds this thread in the future, before creating a new one for my new issue.

-- Update --

I re-installed the game, verified the game files, and manually made sure the AppData folder was completely deleted. Suddenly, I could make normal healthy save files when I loaded my most recent loadable save (Sep 1, 2023) and tried progressing from that point. I was still very suspicious and careful and saved at every turn, just in case, but I was able to carefully move forward. Some minor issues persisted, like opening Transfers, My Club, Finances (and probably more) the first time after loading a save would freeze the game for 2-3 minutes and ALSO sometimes new saves still turned out to be corrupted and not load, just like before.

So, I wouldn't say everything is functioning great, but at least it's something.

I was able to reach the following conclusions:

1. Whenever I load a save file from already inside a game, any future saves I make afterwards will become corrupted and not load. Even if the save I'm loading is perfectly fine and loads up, I have to restart the game completely to load it up, otherwise any new save file I make will not load. 

This didn't use to be the case before these issues started, I've loaded save files from inside the game many times before and been able to save my progress.

2. I mentioned that I moved forward carefully, saving at every turn. Part of that was because I would manually check the size of the newly generated save file before I continued. What I noticed was that the corrupted save files were always larger than the normal ones. My usual saves would be 178-182MB in size, while the corrupted ones that wouldn't load would always be exactly 13MB larger for some reason.
So when I save and see a size of 190+MB, I already know that I will not be able to load and continue any of the saves I'm making. I have to quit the game, launch it anew and load from the latest save file that actually works.