FM2010 patching strategy

In the lead up to the game going into manufacture, we sat down and worked out a patching strategy for FM2010.

There were 2 potential strategies, a 3 patch one, and a 2 patch one.

The 2 patch strategy involved a patch around Xmas time, that would look at any issues raised between now and then, and a patch at the end of February/early March, which would include a data update.

The 3 patch strategy would be the same, but with a day one patch if a serious error, was found between the release of the demo and the game being released.

Last night I was alerted to the fact that Stephen Carr doesn't appear in the Birmingham City squad. Having spoken to the research team this morning, it has happened because Stephen Carr was widely reported to have retired from football before coming out of retirement to join Birmingham. Unfortunately, when this happened his retirement was still set in the master database, and that overrode his Birmingham contract details.

Because of this issue, we have now decided that the 3 patch strategy is the best choice.

This patch won't just look at this issue, but also other issues that are raised in the coming days off the back of the demo where possible, and some minor issues that have been raised by our beta testers. As issues that are raised on the forums are fixed, we will update this thread.

We will aim to release the patch at some point on October 30th, although we obviously cannot guarentee that at this stage, or give a time. I apologise in advance if it ends up slightly later than this, as I'm about to go away on a PR tour round Europe, so want be on the forums much to update about it.

As I hope you can all see from the demo, this is by far and away our most "polished" release to date, but we really are striving for the perfect game, hence our patch strategy change this afternoon - it would have been quite easy for people to have made the Stephen Carr change themselves using the data editor with the full game, but we don't believe you should have to do that when it's our mistake.