Do NOT choose Italian Serie C as a playable league!

This issue really needs to be stickied or otherwise highlighted by SI. Who knows how many more players will have their games ruined by this bug.

If you have Serie C selected as a playable league in your game, regardless of whether you are actually even managing in Italy, your game will crash around July 24th, 2009 and you will not be able to advance.

SI is aware of the issue and they will patch it, but who knows how long before that happens? Many, many players have already had their games ruined by this, at least for the foreseable future (and there is no guarentee a patch will retroactively solve their problem. As of now there is no workaround.

A sampling of threads discussing the issue:

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=66650

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=69580

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=72794

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=73784

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=68243

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=64338

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=73344

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=72412

yup. had this happen in my first career in 09 with spezia f.c. face it we're all paying to be beta testers.

edit: about now brian barwick gives a press conference and announces a 'root and branch review' of the Q&A

If you have Serie C selected as a playable league in your game, regardless of whether you are actually even managing in Italy, your game will crash around July 24th, 2009 and you will not be able to advance.

Correction: Your game might crash. I've been running Serie C and I'm fine. Various people have come out and said they've had no crash. I've read of a group of Italians who ran tests specifically on this problem and only a minority of them had troubles. That's not to say there isn't a problem, though.

I've got it running and I'm in 2011 now, so no problems here.

The problem exists, but it will only affect a minority of users. So I guess it's theoretically worth a gamble if you really want to run Serie C.

Yes there are people who haven't had the problem. But if there's even a %25 chance your save will be ruined after the first year, would you risk it?

The fact I am playing a lot of leagues in various countries, and yet in Italy I only chose Serie B and above, suggests that I personally would not risk it. I was just pointing out that the odds of it not happening are favourable.

Just to add to the discussion, I've just encountered this error as well.

Everything went fine until I reached July 2009, but now the game will always crash after the 24th with the message "a serious error was encountered and the application will close". I was playing in Italian Serie C1/A.

I really hope a solution to this problem will be found soon, I'll have to quit playing the game in the meantime.

Yes there are people who haven't had the problem. But if there's even a %25 chance your save will be ruined after the first year, would you risk it?

There is no 25% chance it will happen. Of all the people playing FM you've linked to what, 8 threads in the OP. Your math isn't very good if you think thats 25%.

The issue is linked with the serie C cup, so maybe the draw does make the difference. My game runs fine, with all Italian Divisions included.

The bug in the Swiss league is universal. So do not start a game with the Swiss league included. AI teams do not give shirt numbers to their new contracted players and they can not play for the first team.

I have passed that date several times with different saves, and no crashes so far.

I didnt. ;-)

The fact I am playing a lot of leagues in various countries, and yet in Italy I only chose Serie B and above, suggests that I personally would not risk it. I was just pointing out that the odds of it not happening are favourable.

There is no 25% chance it will happen. Of all the people playing FM you've linked to what, 8 threads in the OP. Your math isn't very good if you think thats 25%.

The fact is you have no idea how many people have had the issue. It could be well more than %25. Since in order for us to hear about it the players 1) have to have made it to july 2009, 2) have Serie C selected as playable, and 3) have to have posted on this forum about it.

What percentage of players are members here? What percentage play lower leagues? Italian lower leagues?

While I'm sure that of all the FM players in the world, far fewer than %25 will ever encounter this problem, having at least 8 threads with many respondents saying they have the issue under the small sampling of people who have met all of the above conditions I think is a pretty high percentage consider the game has been out two weeks.

SI are well aware of the potential problem and will I am sure sort it in the next patch.

They did already mention in the bugs forum that this issues will be fixed with the next patch.

I'd load up a saved game prior to the crash on the SI server. The more info they have the better chance of fixing it

I think we should all ask for a quick solution:

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=73894

The point of this thread is merely to make sure people know not to choose Serie C so they can avoid this problem. SI is well aware of it but unless you look for the issue specifically you aren't going to notice it. Customers should be aware of potential game breaking problems that can be avoided.

I didn't know about this - I have all European leagues active, am in 2010 now, so I haven't encountered this issue.

It messed up my game, saved it on July 23rd thank god, but can't continue now..

No available hotfix or workaround for this horrible bug?