MathiOi

As a Norwegian citizen I am allowed to play on any online gambling site I want to, as long as it has a legitimate gambling license (whether it's from Malta, Curacao or Norway). However for a gambling site to operate and advertise legally in Norway, they must have a Norwegian gambling license, which only the state-regulated gambling site has. In this instance, the advertisement went through SI which is a British firm and therefore they can advertise to Norwegian customers, albeit not directly (plenty of loopholes, not worth discussing). Regardless of the legitimacy of the ad, I don't think it's good from SI to have a direct ad to a deposit bonus on a gambling site in the game and I was befuddled when I saw it initially. So I was wondering whether this was lazy filtering from the advertisment agency SI uses, or if this was a decision made by SI to allow such ads in their game. The other aspects are just points for discussion.

Yeah no I don't use a VPN or something like that, Norwegian ISP and everything. Also, a small correction, norwegians are allowed to gamble on every gambling site with a license (whether that be from Norway, Malta or Curacao) but norwegian banks aren't allowed to acccept withdrawals from foreign gambling sites and the government is trying to impose a DNS-block on every gambling site that isn't Norsk Tipping.

You make a great point about how gambling related things are already in the game and has been for years, but I have never seen a direct ad to a gambling site before advertising with a deposit bonus. My primary thoughts regarding this was "is this something SI wants in their games" or is it simply just something that the advertising agency accidentally let through? Even if you disregard the ethical and legal dilemmas it poses, I don't think it's good for a game like FM to directly advertise gambling sites. I just wanted to shed some lights on this, whether it's lazy filtering from the advertising agency or a decision that is backed by SI. I also found it weird how targeted the "Targeted Advertising" actually was and that it showed the same results as Google ads (which are extremely targeted) and just exactly what goes into the "behaviour information" for it to produce a result akin to Googles ads, however it might be entirily be coincidental.

Yeah, fully aware of how the advertising agencies work. My questions are more directed at whether this should be in the game, is it morally right to have it in the game, what behaviour information entails and who can see this ad (or alike) in the game.

I'm unsure whether or not this is the right place for this discussion, but I've got some questions regarding the targeted advertising and how/why a gambling advertisement is being shown in the game. I must preface this by saying I have both the "Targeted Advertising" and "Your Choice Regarding Our Marketing Campaigns" enabled as I feel it adds another level of realism to the game and that I don't mind the idea at all. However this instance brought me some questions in regard to the legality/ethics of the ad itself and what information the targeted advertisement used in order to show me this advertisement in the game. As you can see in the screenshot, it's an online casino advertising their deposit bonus in Norwegian. This might just be the result of some lazy filtering by whatever advertising agency SEGA/SI employs and that it sees I'm a norwegian male over 18 (which is information they gain through Steam and the game) and in return shows this gambling ad. But I still feel like this warrants some questioning. I won't delve into the legality aspect of it too much, as I don't know which countries laws it would go under or how relevant it is. But in Norway, it's not allowed to advertise for any casinos other than the state regulated Norsk Tipping and its subsidiaries. As far as I'm aware, casino advertisement directed to norwegian customers isn't allowed either, but there are some loopholes and it is virtually impossible for them to recieve any repercussions, so I won't go into it any further. However I do think it's worth to discuss the ethics of it. FM advertises itself as a PEGI 3 game and in order to have a Steam account you must atleast be 13. You also enter your date of birth when you first launch the game, in order to recieve age appropriate advertising, however anyone who was on the internet prior to turning 18 knows how well people adhere to such things. So even if SI are right in terms of the legal aspects, we all know that people under 18 will have gambling advertisements directed to them, just like I did. Not only children, but this could be triggering to gambling addicts. We are all aware of how big of a role gambling has in todays football, every top team has a gambling shirt sponsor and gambling sponsors in their stadiums. I think most people can agree that it is financially benefitial to the teams, but it's a part of football most people would prefer to have removed. Much like how COVID was never implemented into the game, as the game was supposed to act as a break from real life football, I also think gambling sponsors (albeit a less detrimental) should be removed from the game for the same reason. The potentially worst part of this whole ordeal and how the "Targeted Advertising" actually works and how it shows me gambling advertisements in the game. It might very well be that it was just by chance, but as a man who likes to gamble and has used the site in question before I found it puzzling (I also get the same exact add in my browser). According to the game, I "share my user data and behaviour information from your game with third parties to display targeted advertising". I presume the user data in question is the date of birth you enter when you first launch the game, but I'm curious as to what exactly the "behaviour information" is and what is gathered from where, especially considering this is the same ad I see in my day-to-day browsing. This might have to do with Norway being a small advertising market and that only a few select ads are shown, so I'm curious if people from bigger advertising markets have seen similair gambling ads in the game. Sorry for a long post, but I felt like this is something that should be answered, even if it's just an error from the advertising agency or a decision from SI. Any thoughts or input would be greatly appreiciated.

I'm sure this has been requested here a multitude, but I find it weird that this isn't possible in the current Player/Staff search menu. I like most enjoy adding a narrative to my saves and in some of my saves resigning former players, either as players or staff is a way to add realism and create storylines, so adding a search condition called "Played For" in the player and staff search menu would greatly reduce time spent looking at external sites for players whose previously been at a club. It would function like the "Last Club" condition, with a blank space to fill out with a teams name. But it would list up all the players/staff whose been at a specific club at any point throughout their career, rather than it being just the last club that they were contracted to. This function is already implemented in the game in a way, whenever international squads are announced for a tournament, you get an inbox item and they mention every player who has spent time previously at the club you're managing at. So transferring this feature to the player/staff search menu wouldn't be a tiring ordeal, he said assuringly. Thanks

Hey, I've got a question about increasing the newgens spawn rates from foreign academies. Basically I've created a custom team called FC Gothia in Sweden based on an old idea from 2007, and the Gothia Cup Foundation has an academy set up in the Republic of Congo. So I would like for an influx of congolese newgens to come in my youth intakes in Sweden, basically mimicking what Nordsjælland has done with the RTD Academy. I've set up both the custom clubs with the academy being affiliate to the main team, the affiliate agreement between Gothia and the academy is exactly the same as the affiliate agreement as it is between Nordsjælland and the RTD Academy. Despite this in my 20 years of simulating (two different 10 year) I've yet to get a single congolese newgen in my youth intake, whilst in the mean time Nordsjælland have gotten a plethora of ghanaian newgens. So I'm curious to know whether the ghanaian spawn rate of newgens in hardcoded to be way higher for Nordsjælland than any other team, or if there is something else I could do to increase the spawn rate of congolese newgens for Gothia. I know the nationality of staff members play a role, so would it be good to have a director of congolese nationality? Is there something I can do with either club or if you have any sort of an idea as to what could help increase the congolese newgen rate, I'd be interested to hear. I've attached the .fmf file if anyone is curious enough to have a look at the file. Cheers, appreiciate any feedback gothia2.fmf

I have now got it sorted, what seemed to fix it for me was to delete the editor and download it to same disk that I had the game installed on, rather than a different disk. This might be your issue as well @safasirin . It appears as the pathing in the "special folders" doesn't recognize the game if it's on a different drive. Don't know if it's intended to be like that or if it's a completely irrelevant issue which fixed itself by re-downloading the editor.

Yeah, it's the same for me as well. Reckon SI pushed through a patch which fixed the pathing in the xml file, but seems to be that this was only a hotfix and not the real issue. Yeah, it is the same for me. Seems like SI patched the pathing, but apparently that was not the real issuse and just a temporary hotfix.

Additional error I found The promotion playoff format to the top tier is wrong, but I see that's been issued in another thread. But in the game you are allowed only 3 subs in the playoff promotion games, whereas in real life you're allowed 5 subs in 3 stops. Source; it happened plenty of times in the real life play off promotion