[STEAM] SI please change your patching policy, unavaliable every time you release a patch!

Yeah, thats right. The game is unaviable for me again and has been so every time a new patch is out. I have payed 30€ to this game and that Ad-Aware program does not even let me play a game i have PAID for...

There is a solution to the game unavailable in the FAQ. If Ad-Aware is on the list of programs for steam that may interfere with it (and i believe it may be, havent checked recently) then it may be due to a setting in that program (as stated by yourself above). If it happens regularly, it may be worth speaking to steam support and seeing whether they are able to help.

There is a solution to the game unavailable in the FAQ. If Ad-Aware is on the list of programs for steam that may interfere with it (and i believe it may be, havent checked recently) then it may be due to a setting in that program (as stated by yourself above). If it happens regularly, it may be worth speaking to steam support and seeing whether they are able to help.

STEAM=Ad-Aware

Every program and GAMES i have works without problem. I´m not gonna unistall anyting from my computer to get this ****** STEAM working. It has worked so far those days there is no patch released anyway...

Adware you mean

I must be 1 of the lucky ones. never had the game unavailable. rub my belly, im lucky

Yeah, thats right. The game is unaviable for me again and has been so every time a new patch is out. I have payed 30€ to this game and that Ad-Aware program does not even let me play a game i have PAID for...

You won't be able to play the game while it's downloading and installing the patch, which is totally normal and would be for any update process for any piece of software. There has been instances of folks trying to run the game while this is happening and it will be unavailable as a result. Please be patient while this process completes, and if you believe it has completed, then please check out the guidance as posted above.

Please also make sure you are running the latest version of the Steam client too.

Even if the game wasn't on steam you wouldn't be able to play while it was updating.

Some people will complain about anything.

My game won't start & it isn't even downloading the patch.

This is ridiculous.

You won't be able to play the game while it's downloading and installing the patch, which is totally normal and would be for any update process for any piece of software. There has been instances of folks trying to run the game while this is happening and it will be unavailable as a result. Please be patient while this process completes, and if you believe it has completed, then please check out the guidance as posted above.

Please also make sure you are running the latest version of the Steam client too.

Hi Neil, This may seem like a stupid question, but how do you know if it's downloading and installing a patch and not just a technical error? Also while I agree that you're right with any piece of software would be unavailable during an updating process, the difference is that with other software you would schedule this procedure to occur at a time convenient to you. The problem is I only have a free hour now, so I'd prefer to play now, and update this evening as opposed to being forced to do that now.

Can someone of SI explain to me why you're not allowed to handle the updating thing youreself? Now as an Steam user you're literally being forced to let Steam update youre FM before you can play. In Steam you can untick the button "update this game automatically" ... but it will update it anyway, and playing offline is no option because Steam won't let you.

What pisses me off most is that i did not buy this damned game from STEAM. I repeat, i did not buy this from STEAM. I was told that i would only need STEAM to activate the game, nothing more. At Gamersgate where i bought the game it only said that i would need a third party software to ACTIVATE the game. But now i am stuck with this endless torture called STEAM. It has been problems from day 1 where the damned thing couldnt recognize my internet connection(while every other program and game COULD).

But despite all that, i am supposed to go into 20 pages FAQs etc, to fix this. Excuse me, i wont fix anything. Let me enjoy my game, i dont want updates and cloud and other worthless **** STEAM brings me, i have already activated the game so your precarious DRM is on(not that its effective, the game is already cracked anyway :-P ), now i only want to click on FM2012 icon and play just like previous years, nothing more....

Playing in steam offline mode works on my computer without any problems.

My game won't start after this last update!? And every time i restart steam it updates again and then won't start...again. Starting offline doesn't work either

Even if the game wasn't on steam you wouldn't be able to play while it was updating.

Some people will complain about anything.

But you would have a choice about whether to update there and then or not, for example I am now on the train for a 3 hour journey, i fancied playing a bit of FM to pass the time but steam wouldnt let me play it, in the end I have had to pay £5 for wi-fi access on the train so it can update - you should have the choice to reject an update until a more convenient time.

Hi Neil, This may seem like a stupid question, but how do you know if it's downloading and installing a patch and not just a technical error? Also while I agree that you're right with any piece of software would be unavailable during an updating process, the difference is that with other software you would schedule this procedure to occur at a time convenient to you. The problem is I only have a free hour now, so I'd prefer to play now, and update this evening as opposed to being forced to do that now.

There's a few contributing factors to all of this, which we're still monitoring too and working with Steam to identify potential problems.

First of all, you should make sure your Steam client is up to date and you can find out what build of the Steam client you are using by selecting "About Steam" from within the client, which will pop up a box and provide you with the details. For example, the Mac client, which I'm looking at right now tells me: "Built: Nov 1 2011, at 09:36:52", "Steam API: v012" and would be similar for Windows. If you're running something older than this, then your client is out of date.

The next step is less straightforward, because whenever we release a patch there are thousands of people connecting and downloading at the same time, which does obviously put some stress on the system, albeit a relatively small one. This means the update can take a little longer than normal to kick in, but you should see it start to update from your game library. Once it's downloaded all the files, it's not as obvious as it should be that it's installing and you just need to wait for a couple of minutes. Usually at this point some users have tried to launch their game and it's not let them, and they haven't realised it's installing in the background. From there, some have unfortunately tampered with their Steam and game settings/files and made something go awry.

In-between all of this and from the last patch release, we did identify a potential issue within the Steam client, whereby in some cases it wasn't refreshing itself properly. Steam have released one, if not two, updates to the Steam client since then, which is why it's important to make sure your client is up to date.

If you are still having problems, it's worth restarting your machine completely to make sure the Steam process is properly removed from memory. Whenever you connect to Steam, it will periodically check whether it needs to update itself as well as any games in your library and it's not always immediately obvious how frequently that check occurs, but on launching the client, it should do that automatically.

Playing in steam offline mode works on my computer without any problems.

I get: This game is not ready to be played in offline mode. With other words: we force you to update youre game, and otherwise you just cannot play it

My game won't start after this last update!? And every time i restart steam it updates again and then won't start...again. Starting offline doesn't work either

I actually had that problem last night when I updated to 12.0.4 on my Mac at home. What operating system are you running?

The way I solved this was to uninstall Steam, reboot my machine, download and install the latest client from www.steampowered.com and then launch it. Steam then asked to update the client to the latest version (as the web based download was not the most up to date), which worked and then I was able to log in and play as per normal.

Unless of course, you are suggesting that Football Manager 2012 keeps updating itself?

What pisses me off most is that i did not buy this damned game from STEAM. I repeat, i did not buy this from STEAM. I was told that i would only need STEAM to activate the game, nothing more. At Gamersgate where i bought the game it only said that i would need a third party software to ACTIVATE the game. But now i am stuck with this endless torture called STEAM. It has been problems from day 1 where the damned thing couldnt recognize my internet connection(while every other program and game COULD).

But despite all that, i am supposed to go into 20 pages FAQs etc, to fix this. Excuse me, i wont fix anything. Let me enjoy my game, i dont want updates and cloud and other worthless **** STEAM brings me, i have already activated the game so your precarious DRM is on(not that its effective, the game is already cracked anyway :-P ), now i only want to click on FM2012 icon and play just like previous years, nothing more....

Thats a big issue for me, maybe due to the job I do but the advertising on the box is pathetic.

It should state categorically that Steam is needed to RUN the game, not just to activate it.

Can someone of SI explain to me why you're not allowed to handle the updating thing youreself? Now as an Steam user you're literally being forced to let Steam update youre FM before you can play. In Steam you can untick the button "update this game automatically" ... but it will update it anyway, and playing offline is no option because Steam won't let you.

I would personally prefer that you have the choice on whether you want to update or not, but that's the way Steam works and for us, we always want our users to play on the latest version of the game.

The issue you mentioned has been raised with Steam and I believe they acknowledged there was a potential bug in the client.

I would personally prefer that you have the choice on whether you want to update or not, but that's the way Steam works and for us, we always want our users to play on the latest version of the game.

The issue you mentioned has been raised with Steam and I believe they acknowledged there was a potential bug in the client.

Well if that can be sorted out it would be fantastic. I just like to decide for myself when I update a game, and not in this way. Also no offence to SI for this, but more to Steam, I hope this gets sorted out soon.

This is an absolute joke I've payed for this game my internet connection is fine yet it won't let me play it?????, never in my life have i payed for something and some stupid third party dictates whether it will let me play it or not!!, I'm really angered it has come to this SI look to have chased the money at the expense of their customers it seems, are you really telling me there is no way for us to play a game offline that we have paid £30 for without all this cracked copy nonsence happening?, ridiculous situation!!!!

There's a few contributing factors to all of this, which we're still monitoring too and working with Steam to identify potential problems.

First of all, you should make sure your Steam client is up to date and you can find out what build of the Steam client you are using by selecting "About Steam" from within the client, which will pop up a box and provide you with the details. For example, the Mac client, which I'm looking at right now tells me: "Built: Nov 1 2011, at 09:36:52", "Steam API: v012" and would be similar for Windows. If you're running something older than this, then your client is out of date.

The next step is less straightforward, because whenever we release a patch there are thousands of people connecting and downloading at the same time, which does obviously put some stress on the system, albeit a relatively small one. This means the update can take a little longer than normal to kick in, but you should see it start to update from your game library. Once it's downloaded all the files, it's not as obvious as it should be that it's installing and you just need to wait for a couple of minutes. Usually at this point some users have tried to launch their game and it's not let them, and they haven't realised it's installing in the background. From there, some have unfortunately tampered with their Steam and game settings/files and made something go awry.

In-between all of this and from the last patch release, we did identify a potential issue within the Steam client, whereby in some cases it wasn't refreshing itself properly. Steam have released one, if not two, updates to the Steam client since then, which is why it's important to make sure your client is up to date.

If you are still having problems, it's worth restarting your machine completely to make sure the Steam process is properly removed from memory. Whenever you connect to Steam, it will periodically check whether it needs to update itself as well as any games in your library and it's not always immediately obvious how frequently that check occurs, but on launching the client, it should do that automatically.

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I'm using the same build of steam on my PC as you are, so I'm assuming it's the latest one. In terms of if it's downloading or not, I have absolutely no idea. I checked the library and nothing seems to be happening, so I'm assuming it's downloaded? I've never used steam before, so I'm ashamed to admit I'm out of my comfort zone with all this stuff!

Anyway, I'll reset my pc and let you know how I get on!

Thanks again for trying to help!

Edit to say, I just played around with the views in steam, and one of them says the game is ready to play, but when I try to start the game I get the error message. I'll restart now!

I'm using Lion, i don't really wanna reinstall Steam coz it was such a mission to get it installed the 1st time, and i really don't want to reinstall football manager coz here in south africa it takes a few days to download with our wonderful 3rd world internet speed. I see the game is finally out in the shops here, if i bought the game on disk would i need steam and would it still want to update every time i try run it?

^ Yes to both your questions.

What issue are you having? Have you taken a look in FAQ here http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/275972-Football-Manager-2012-Activation-Steam-FAQ to see if it solves your issue?

I can't see anything in there, all i get is "Steam error - The game is currently unavailable, please try again at another time", I've tried putting steam offline and same thing happens, i know your trying to help but this is really really bad, surely if it's updating the game it should say that and not flag as a "Steam error" which indicates there is an issue, I can't see anywhere where it says it is currently updating the game.

Just noticed that the game is showing as 'ready to play' so surely all updates have been downloaded yet it still won't run?, what chance do we have of identifying an issue if Steam doesn't even know why it's not running?, I should not be recieving a generic error message from steam it should be telling me what the problem actually is surely?

Yuk, thats not cool

I have the same issue and I do not run any malaware or antivirus. Never had a single issue with Steam till today.

The game is unavailable ???

Has Steam perhaps lost few servers ?

Can people having the issue please try verifying steam cache, how to do that can be found here http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/279162-Football-Manager-2012-*OFFICIAL*-FAQ?p=7184719&viewfull=1#post7184719

This finally seems to have fixed it for me... Cheers!

Can people having the issue please try verifying steam cache, how to do that can be found here http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/279162-Football-Manager-2012-*OFFICIAL*-FAQ?p=7184719&viewfull=1#post7184719

K , i did that and now Football manager is updating properly . Thanks

Can people having the issue please try verifying steam cache, how to do that can be found here http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/279162-Football-Manager-2012-*OFFICIAL*-FAQ?p=7184719&viewfull=1#post7184719

Still not working after that it verified all files successfully, man I would have been better spending the £30 on a toaster it's got as much chance of launching FM than Steam has it seems.

Still not working after that it verified all files successfully, man I would have been better spending the £30 on a toaster it's got as much chance of launching FM than Steam has it seems.

I take that back it has started to update now so I'm sure it will start after finishing the update, Steam need to update the system to let us know there is an update that has not yet been applied which is why it's not launching, at least then we won't be wasting time looking at other potential issues

If my downloads is not loading anything, what do i do??

im using mac so i've no idea where exactly are the files so i cant check. I've verify the system cache but nothing is loading!!! please offer me some guidance.

Can people having the issue please try verifying steam cache, how to do that can be found here http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/279162-Football-Manager-2012-*OFFICIAL*-FAQ?p=7184719&viewfull=1#post7184719

It worked also for me, thx

i had it for the first time today with the new patch,but after verifying steam cache...all is fine. i personally like steam and find it way easier to patch up games.

Yeah i had this, the reason it's unavailable is because it removes the FM.exe file!!!

FM11 I had no problems, with steam using automatic updates. It told you it was updating when you launched FM11. This year it doesn't tell you anything and the above happens.

It's that old saying, why change something that isn't broken?

:confused: another friggin update now FMRTE wont work,how many patches you guys gonna make,one a week?,,sod this:confused:

Mines now saying game unavailable. I am having enough troubles with games freezing alot and now I can't even get into the game.

I remember the good old days of putting the CD in and it would work no problem. Ever since using this Steam thing, it seems like no end of problems. The fact you must have the most upto date of everything it seems or the game won't work is a bit much too.

I really dislike Steam.

HI

Last two updates i have had the same issue with message saying game unavaible and i do think it joke this happens. FM2011 never got this issue at all when updates was released. To resolve both times i had to right click on Game and go properties and then local Files and verify integrity of game cache, once done this it then runs update and then can play the game.

Do find this annoying that having do this so far for every patch thats come out. Not sure if this steam issue or SI but i would reccommend trying this solution to solve your issue.

Also would it not be wise for SI and Steam to work together to resolving why this happening as i see plenty of complaints on this already.

It's not Steam that's really the issue, though. It's SI. They have released three patches in 13 days since FM12's release, which is a bit absurd. The first patch concerned licensing issues, which was obviously an administrative screw-up on SI's end.

While I haven't experienced any technical errors, per se, I've now had three wtf moments in two weeks as the game has been unavailable and I've had to verify the game cache, download the unannounced patch, etc. Fifteen or twenty minutes each time. If this micro-patching is SI's policy going forward, I'll be skipping FM13, as it's just too annoying that customers should be this inconvenienced for their incompetence.

it's kinda strange to me though. i'm an advocate of steam. this is my 3rd year usinig it. i've never had a single problem using it. until this year. it would figure that the most problems with it would come during the year SI are requiring that it be used.

it's kinda strange to me though. i'm an advocate of steam. this is my 3rd year usinig it. i've never had a single problem using it. until this year. it would figure that the most problems with it would come during the year SI are requiring that it be used.

I've not had a single problem throughout release and all the updates, however I can see why it's driving people nuts at times.

If you know how Steam works you know when to just wait and when you need to do something, what's wrong is that Steam should be telling you that at all stages and it isn't.

A good example is if you're not connected to the internet and boot FM Steam willl say "updating Steam" which is borrox because it's actually trying to connect, then that goes and absolutely nothing happens for an age (it should say processing or something) it finally comes up with the option to play offline and you click it but nothing then happens because it's forgotten that you actually asked to play FM, so you need to find Steam in your task bar, right click and click on FM12, finally you're there.

Of course along the way loads of people will have thought sod all was happening and clicked here, clicked there and caused problems they'd never have had if they knew they just needed to wait.

It's nowhere near intuitive and it needs to be made so rapidly, I'm not sure if that's purely down to Steam or if SI have a part but at the very least SI should be rattling Steam's cage violently.

Edit, I've found it best to have Steam default to open on my library page and I boot Steam before FM, once it's booted I wait twenty seconds because I know it'll be checking for Steam platform updates and any game updates.(once again it ought to tell you it's doing that)

If it does start updating a game you'll see that next to the game title.

I actually had that problem last night when I updated to 12.0.4 on my Mac at home. What operating system are you running?

The way I solved this was to uninstall Steam, reboot my machine, download and install the latest client from www.steampowered.com and then launch it. Steam then asked to update the client to the latest version (as the web based download was not the most up to date), which worked and then I was able to log in and play as per normal.

Unless of course, you are suggesting that Football Manager 2012 keeps updating itself?

I assume you can understand why that would be considered a bit of a faff & will become very tiresome if the process had to be repeated even a couple of times a year.

It's nowhere near intuitive and it needs to be made so rapidly, I'm not sure if that's purely down to Steam or if SI have a part but at the very least SI should be rattling Steam's cage violently.

Unfortunately I do not see little SI having a loud enough voice to force any action from Valve.

The PC I play FM on isn't connected to the internet, so my way of updating has always been to download the file on a PC that's connected to the internet, and transfer that to my FM PC.

I'm disappointed that SI have removed that option, and made Steam the only way of updating. We were told that we only needed to be connected to the internet once when activating. It now turns out that you have to have Steam connected to the internet to update as well, which I don't see as fair. In my case it's luckily just a minor inconvenience, but for some it may mean it's difficult to update.

There's also the point for those whose PC is always connected to the internet that they don't have a choice when to update. I know I never like to update FM mid season in case match engine changes throw me a bit off course tactically. I'm sure I'm not the only one who does that.

Bad move SI to force us to update via Steam.

Can people having the issue please try verifying steam cache, how to do that can be found here http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/279162-Football-Manager-2012-*OFFICIAL*-FAQ?p=7184719&viewfull=1#post7184719

I kept getting the message "This game is currently unavailable" on steam, and after doing this its all working fine now.

Thanks Michael!