Esports Manager 2026

I was so hyped for this game since announcement, As someone with multiple thousands of hours across Football Manager over Steam and Gamepass and someone with multiple thousands of hours in CS and having semi-professionally competed in CS and other games this was like a dream come true. However! I'll go over the story i had with this game. The remember when the demo first released and i immediately thought "oh my god, i'm gonna do a video series on this game" But the demo was simply so unfinished that i couldn't find a way to make content about the game without a lot of negativity. Then the Demo got updated and you could tell that the devs actually are trying to fix the problems they have and that they WANT to put in the effort to make this a successful title. Slowly you got to see things click into place. Better AI movement, Smarter opponents, More sensible transfer policies for teams, the lot. Then the game released and for some reason at first it felt like a little step back, All the fixed stuff was there but now that we could play for more then 1 in game month all the other problems that were hiding behind a 1 month demo came to light. Even more non-sensicle transfers, Tournaments and the ERS system being kinda broken and very abusable. But patch after patch, update after update these things would get knocked down. Something the devs do which i highly respect is that they're not afraid to throw small patches at problems instead of doing everything in a big update, This makes it so the game always feels tinkered on. What this does ruin a little however is that some of those patches will not apply to old save files, leading to players having to re-start their journeys often or choosing to stick to an older save for the sake of the journey (For example when FE teams could no longer signed men. I was in the middle of a Alter Ego save and decided not to swap to a new save yet.) Now we're at a stage where the game is very playable and enjoyable. Your in game tactics feel like they make a difference compared to simming matches, Development is easy to track and predict, The movements are still a little weird and can sometimes feel like "Oh yeah but i didn't want them to stand still in a 4 stack for 2 minutes doing nothing." But i and my friends pretend the IGL was simply "feeling out the space" or something when that happens and just play. The only 2 annoying things i still have with the game is that some staff members will insist on sending you the same requests month in month out even after you've declined every single time. For example the CFO unlocks the ability to get months financial reports. But if you don't have money in your transfer budget she will BEG you to put some in. Even if it doesn't make sense to have it there because you're spending it else where and are not looking to make transfers. AND Creating your own custom database requires you to log-in on a website with a steam account (doesn't have to be your main) Which is sketchy for a lot of people. (You can also access custom DBs through the game's workshop if you don't wanna create your own.) Game's good, legit recommend and it'll be even better in the future.