Much has been made of Sports Interactive’s failure to release Football Manager 25 with many worrying what it will mean for the future of a company that has poured so much money and man hours into a project that yet return anything. But little do most people know FM25 isn’t the SI’s first failure to follow through on a game in recent years. FM25 isn’t even SI’s first attempt at building a game on the Unity engine.
 

In 2018 Miles announced on Twitter the start of two new projects, an unnamed one set for release in the same year, and the vaguely named “Project Yuka”.
 

The unnamed project turned out to be FMdB, a mobile application that let you browse the Football Manager Database at anytime from your mobile phone and Miles wasn’t wrong, it was launched in time for the Qatar World Cup. Unfortunately it never really took off and was shut down in April 2021.
 

Project Yuka is something else entirely. As revealed by some over enthusiastic employees LinkedIn profiles, Project Yuka is an MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) Game.
 

Specifically it is an MMO designed around micro transactions and loot boxes, with gameplay involving collecting packs which could be opened to reveal famous players who you can then use in your team while competing in live events against other players to earn rewards.
 

It is SI’s answer to EA’s Ultimate Team.

Here’s the official description given to the game:
 

Assemble an unlimited superstar squad and unlock endless potential in Soccer Club Rivals.
 

COLLECT AND TRANSFORM GLOBAL STARS 
 

Collect real-world stars from a packed pool of 5,000 soccer players and better them on the road to glory. Combine your players to fuse skills and elevate their abilities.
 

BUILD MULTIPLE TEAMS FOR EVERY OCCASION
 

Line-up winning player combos across five soccer styles to defeat every obstacle. With more victories come bigger rewards, unlocking superior stadiums fit for your superstar squad.
 

INFLUENCE PIVOTAL MOMENTS 
 

Trust your instincts in crucial match moments to influence the final outcome. Whether it’s to go all-out attack for a late victory or who takes a penalty, make a speedy call at the pivotal time.

 

EARN REWARDS WITH DAILY EVENTS
Put your teams to the test in live events and rack up the rewards that will take your squad-building to the next level. The more you win, the more you’ll rise – filling your team with elite stars and unlocking your club’s full potential.

It should be no surprise to anyone that SI would want to pursue the possibility of using loot boxes and micro transactions as an additional revenue stream. EA purportedly made $1.62 billion per year from Ultimate Team alone in 2021 (link) vastly out dwarfing SI’s £ 47.7m revenue in the same year (link). It would take SI more than 40 years to earn the same amount at their current rate.
 

Project Yuka isn’t SI’s first attempt to turn Football Manager into an MMO or to utilise micro transactions and loot boxes. In 2008 they launched Football Manager Live, which allowed managers to compete against each other in live matches and build their squads through an online auction system. Unfortunately it was plagued by issues and the constant updates to try and fix issues with the games economics left players frustrated. A complete reset of the game world, and everyone’s progress, in March 2010 signalled the end before the servers were shut down permanently in May 2011.
 

However in July 2010, while FM Live was technically still alive, Miles Jacobson announced work had begun on “FMO” (Football Manager Online), an alternative to FM Live aimed specifically at the Korean market and designed around this specific audience and the way they tend to enjoy games at “PC Bangs “ and LAN gaming centres (public spaces people can meet up to play games together). 

However the launch of FMO was heavily delayed and eventually released in China a whopping 5 years later in July 2015. Gameplay was pretty similar to Football Manager Live, you could buy players in an online marketplace and compete against other human managers online, with the main difference being the introduction of micro transactions and loot boxes. However it failed to catch on and by the time it was shut down in February 2018, news of its cancellation barely caused a ripple among FM fans online (just 5 comments on Miles Tweet, once of which is his own!).

So 2018 is when development first started on Project Yuka. It was to be built on the Mobile version of Unity’s game engine and headed up by Marc Vaughan, a long standing member of the team since the 90’s. Vaughan would work remotely from the United States alongside a new team assembled at SI HQ in London made up primarily of the team that worked on Football Manager Online.

Progress was fast, as early as 2019 details of game were revealed to SI staff not directly involved in its development for the first time, as was it’s name “Soccer Club Rivals” or “SCR” for short. This name was chosen due to the “fun” way it works both as an acronym of “Soccer Club Rivals” and as a disemvoweling of the word “Soccer”  (disemvoweling  refers to the trend of removing vowels from popular words to create brand names). The game was briefly called “Soccer Club Rivals: Next Gen Football Management” with the subtitle subsequently dropped.
 

By January 2020 SI applied to trademark the new name in the UK and US.
 

Later that year the first marketing materials started to appear featuring Philip Coutinho and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang although the game was listed as being from the fake developer “PQVT”.

In September 2020, the first BETA test was opened exclusively for users in Philippines. Followed by residents of United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Argentina and Colombia in December. 

These December 2020 BETA tests coincided with the first appearance of APK’s on the web. APK stands for “Android Package Kit” and are used to distribute and install Android App’s, it’s Android’s equivalent of an Exe for Windows or Dmg for Mac. They are often used as a means to share apps, both legally and illegally, outside of the restrictions implemented through the official Google Play Store. You can still download old versions here: https://soccer-club-rivals.en.uptodown.com/android/download 
 

Experiments were also undertaken with social media advertising, with adverts appearing on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger declaring “Football Management Reinvented” alongside the text “Who will captain your dream club to glory?” and a still of Aubameyang  taking a shot in the 3D match engine.
 

However a proper release was still a long way off and by March 2021 the game was shut down for the first time.
 

Nothing more was revealed about the game throughout 2021 or early 2022 as the developers worked on improvements following on from feedback from the BETA tests. By this time covid had, had a major impact on the studio, they were also in the process of moving to a new, larger, office for the second time in 5 years and of course Project Dragonfly was well underway with FM22 intended to be the last version of FM on the old engine. Q3 2021 was actually when SI first realised, they wouldn’t be able to meet their deadline of releasing the new Unity version in November 2022 and it was delayed for the first of the three times so far (the second coming in November 2024 and the third coming this month in February 2025). 
 

Nonetheless despite all these distractions development of SCR continued and the first proper version was released in Indonesia, in November 2022, under SEGA’s name rather than Sports Interactive.

Around the same time new purple and blue branding was revealed as well as the removal of players in SCR kits.

This release lasted a little longer than the previous BETA starting in November 2022, a new website was setup, social media profiles began to appear as well as the first gameplay footage being posted to YouTube.

However by September 2023 the game had been shut down again, with no official communication, fans were left to vent their frustration and demand refunds in Instagram comments.

Since then there has been no update. Nothing more has been posted on the game’s Instagram, the Play Store link returns a not found error and the website has been removed completely. We are now 7 years on from the start of this project, significantly less time than SI think it’s going to take to completely rebuild FM in Unity, and there is little to show for it. It seems unlikely that the game has continued to be developed for the past 18 months with the studio’s resources instead being refocused entirely on the failed release of FM25.

SCR, it seems, is dead.
 

What does this mean for SI’s Finances and Micro Transactions

Much has been made of the financial hit they will take from cancelling FM25, can they survive two failed games? And what does this mean for the future of micro transactions in the franchise? There is a clear intention to move in this direction both with SCR and their presence in console versions of FM, presumably as a means to test the water away from the potential anger of the more “hardcore” fans playing on PC.
 

I can only imagine how huge the backlash will be if, when the next FM finally releases, it is filled with micro transactions. But can SI afford to sit on this potential gold mine for much longer, especially after the huge hit these two failed games will have had on their bottom line?
 

Then again, has the development of SCR really had any impact at all? If you look at the companies finances there is no great spike in expenditure in 2018 when development started. This is because they were already working on FM Online before that and simply switched over.
 

The really crazy thing is that SI have been developing an MMO for nearly 20 years straight.

• FM Live 2006-2011
• FM Online 2010-2018
• Soccer Club Rivals 2018-2023 (possibly still in development?)
   

The costs of developing an MMO have been baked into SI’s finances for 20 years straight with constant development in one form or another throughout this period. So it seems unlikely that SCR’s failure, if it has been dropped altogether, will have any significant impact on SI’s long term future.
 

What was SCR like?

So what was SCR actually like? When you first load up the game you’re jettisoned straight into the 3D match engine with a friendly match against your training squad. The simplistic 3D graphics are accompanied by a grey-haired commentator while players are depicted inside cards, very similar to FIFA cards, with their face, position and rating out of 100. You are also helped along the way by a female assistant who advises you on changes you could or should be making.
 

After your first match has finished you’re warded with “Fans” and “Pack Tokens” as well as a “Pack” which you can rip open to discover new cards, as shown by the 80 rated Romero card below. Some cards are “Limited Edition” and have boosted abilities compared to the standard versions of that players card.  
 

You’re then taken straight into a second training match after which you’re taught that you can upgrade your players. Player development in SCR uses an interesting “Fuse” mechanic, whereby you can select players that you wish to discard from your team and they are somehow magically fused with another player that you keep, who’s abilities are subsequently upgraded. Since you’re earning at least 5 players in a pack after every game, this mechanic makes sense as a means to give unneeded squad players some utility.
 

You’re then told that you need to play, and win, one more training match before you can start playing live matches against other real people around the world. After this match you’ll unlock “Daily Goals” which if achieved unlock more rewards. “Coins” are also introduced for the first time. Coins can be used to buy new players, but new players are also available for free “every few hours”. The idea here is obviously to encourage and incentivise you into regularly opening the app throughout the day.

How much did the Micro Transactions cost?

Strangely in the version used for this article prices were shown in both British Pounds and Indonesian Rupiah which is presumably a bug. At the time these screenshots were taken 1 GBP was equivalent to around 18,243 Rupiah. You can also buy players with direct cash or in game gems or coins. Gems can be bought by direct cash while coins can be bought via gems. Think that’s confusing? That’s the point, people are more likely to spend more money if they don’t realise how much they’re spending.
 

I should also note that SI seemed to modify how much these cost regularly, possibly doing A/B testing. (A/B testing involves showing different users different amounts in an attempt to find the perfect price to charge). You can see in these two examples below one from November 2022 and the other from February 2023 that in the former an Upgrade costs 30 gems while in the latter it costs just 2 gems.

I’m just going to focus on the latest version I can find from February 2023. Below you can see the in game store where you can buy gems and coins.
 

Gems come in packs the more you buy the cheaper it is with each gem costing between £0.009 and £0.0072 (that’s less than 1p).
 

A pack of 5000 coins will then cost you 210 gems meaning it costs between £1.89 and £1.51.
 

While a pack of 250,000 coins will then cost you 6000 gems meaning it costs between £54.00 and £43.20.
 

This all means a single “coin” has a value of anywhere from £0.000378 to £0.0001728. 
 

Of course the smallest pack of gems you can buy is 220 whilst the smallest amount you can spend is 210, this is to ensure you always have some left over that you don’t want to “waste” which is intended to keep you playing the game and buying more.
 

Confused? Again, that’s the point.
 

Below I’ll try and break down the cost of some players that can be seen.   
 

• Middlesbrough GK Sol Brynn = 215 coins = 4-8p
• Brighton LW Ferguson = 322 coins = 6-12p
• Former Sevilla DC Rekik = 5 gems = 4-5p
• Former Leeds DC Cooper = 777 coins = 13-29p
• Belgium CM Dejaegere = 25 gems = 18-23p
• Getafe GK Soria = 75 gems = 54-68p
• Boring DM Milner = 66 gems = 48-59p
• Portuguese ST Vitinha = 68 gems = 49-61p
• French DC Varane = 88p
• French DM Kante = £1.92

That’s a real mix! Some of the cheaper players seem very cheap at just a few pennies but if Kante is setting you back nearly £2 you’re probably looking at a minimum of £50 to pay for a full squad of superstars.

Don’t forget also that the game doesn’t have training to improve players, instead it has the Fuse mechanic, so these cheap players may be better understood as boosts for your better players than players you’d ever actually use in your team.
 

However it doesn’t seem worthwhile buying players for this purpose. We can see above that to level up Yanis Cimignani from 52 to 53 appears to cost 2 gems which is between 1.4p to 1.8p. Where as combining 3 players all rated 51-53, who seem to have a value of about 4-12p, increases Cimignani’s ability by 2 from 52 to 54. So it’s about twice as expensive to buy players to upgrade rather than just buying the upgrade itself.
 

We can then work out a very rough Grind-To-Pay Ratio. If we want to increase Cimignani from 52 to 92 it would cost 80 gems equivalent to 58-72p depending how many gems you buy initially. Playing a match takes about 3 minutes and rewards you with 5 cards although some of them may be higher rated than the players in the Fuse example above lets generously say a pack is equivalent to 2 sets of those 3 players. That Fuse increased the rating by 2 so a pack will increase the rating by 4, meaning you need ten packs to increase Cimignani equivalent to 30 minutes play time. So we’re left with about £1 to £1.50 an hour. I’m no expert but that seems about right on where some in the industry think the value should be.
 

However I also think that’s probably an unreasonable assumption since playing matches also lead to other rewards and come with the possibility of immediately drawing a 92 rated player rather than increasing a lesser players ability. So the actual Grind-To-Pay Ratio seems like it would actually be way below £1. 
 

Why did Soccer Club Rivals fail?

I feel at this point I need to reiterate, we don’t know for sure that it has failed, there has been no official announcement. The complete removal of the website and play store link suggests it may have. But it also seems like that they have a solid working game that has had years put into it, throwing that all away seems a little crazy.

All I have access to is the 12 minute intro to the game, I’ve no idea how the actual match making worked. If there weren’t enough players obviously the game wouldn’t work at all, presumably early on in games like this they have to match you against bots instead, how obvious that was or much it deteriorated from the enjoyment, is hard to tell.
 

The game was downloaded over 100,000 times for Android. With just 1 percent playing it regularly for 30 minutes a day you should have 27 players online at any one time during an 18 hour “daytime” window. However that’s quite optimistic, that number could easily be 0.1% and then you’re down to 2-3 people online at any one time, a rate too low to be fun, leading to even less players sticking around and spiralling into disaster.
 

Still 100,000 downloads to a game that as far as I know was only available in Indonesia is pretty impressive, a world wide release would surely have seen millions of downloads and presumably a much greater chance of success.

So what else could it be, maybe the game itself was just crap? It doesn’t seem like there’s a lot to it other than playing matches and opening packs, even then you have very limited control over your tactics with simplistic options such as Defensive, Neutral and Attacking Mentality. Player development is really lacking with the Fuse mechanic bypassing any traditional training mechanic. Finally the “Daily Goals” don’t suggest there’s much more with the only goals beyond winning matches just being acquiring and upgrading players. Your daily goal is to buy gems to buy players? That doesn’t sound very fun.

Nonetheless the few reviews I can find are positive and simply ask for more. I have a feeling the reaction from FM fans reading this will be a mixture of disdain for micro transactions and a genuine desire to see and play the game for themselves. I’m sure the interest would have been there for a global release, what has happened?

 
What do you make of SCR? Do you want to play and hope development is continuing or don’t care at all? Would you prefer SI released this sort of Mobile MMO or the fuller experience of FM Live and FM Online? Do you think an MMO version of FM can ever work? SI have been trying to get it right for 20 years now.
 

Finally what does this all mean for the main franchise? Will we eventually see micro transactions and loot boxes added to the main game? What do SI have planned for online play given that it’s clearly something they’ve spent a lot of time and money on?