When it was first announced back in 2022, there was a huge groundswell of interest for F1 Manager. After years of motorsport fans relying on Motorsport Manager as the only strategy game available, having a fully licensed and modern title to enjoy was a dream come true.
Of course with big excitement came even bigger expectations. The wishlists for features, gameplay, and mechanics were enormous. As was the eventual comedown.
After three years, things are not looking good for the franchise. What's gone wrong? And is there any saving it?
Declining numbers
The hype for F1 Manager 2022 resulted in pretty solid player numbers. An all-time peak of 23,797 on Steam was only just shy of Codemaster's F1 2021 player peak on Steam and a number lots of studios would be delighted to see.
The problem was that F1 Manager 2022 was fairly buggy. This is expected in modern games, and something players can put up with if they feel the game will get ongoing support until it is in a fit state. That is not what happened.
After a few months Frontier announced they were moving on to the next title and would no longer support F1 Manager 2022. The outrage was enormous as fans felt short-changed. The impact for Frontier was a quick backtrack, but the damage was done.
F1 Manager 2023 topped out at just 6,352 players on Steam per Steam Charts, just 26% of the 2022 player count.
F1 Manager 2024 saw that number grow to 8,092. However, it retailed at £39.99 for the Deluxe Edition and just £29.99 for the Standard Edition, a £15 discount on the day-one price of previous titles.
Even Create-A-Team, the much-requested feature that worked so well for Codemasters in F1 2020, and a drop in price could not win back those initial players.
Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle
Management games can be extremely complicated, but what keeps players coming back is a feeling that the gameplay itself can't be gamed. That there is no meta to exploit and a meaningful challenge from the AI.
F1 Manager, for all its surface complexity, does not have that. If you are just consistent with your car upgrades and don't dig yourself a financial hole then you'll get to the top regardless of anything else.
The r/F1Manager subreddit is full of ultra-detailed breakdowns of the flaws in AI development. There are countless versions of a "meta" for parts development and facility building that make the game overly simple. Plenty of players have shown off winning races with Williams in the first season because of OP strategies that simply break the immersion.
While the in-race graphics of F1 Manager and the myriad of decisions to make during a Grand Prix steal so much headline space in the marketing for the game, what keeps players involved in a management title, especially an annual release, is the feeling that you can't just brute force your way to glory.
Football Manager is a prime example of this. It has its own flaws with AI development, but Sports Interactive has worked to try and balance that by making its AI teams tricky to extract transfer value from and of course the randomness of injuries and the game itself can make even the best teams stumble.
F1 Manager has none of that. It's a game that feels complex at first glance, but is actually incredibly straightforward after you get over that initial difficulty.
For all that, you can still have fun with F1 Manager. There is still a sense of achievement for maximising a race result, for making that crucial decision at the right time to generate an unexpected outcome.
It's a game we encourage every sim racing fan to try as it gives a great strategic take on racing.
What's next?
Three years into a four-year deal it is clear that Frontier's gamble with a big license is not paying off.
Player numbers are struggling, there is little community support for them, and while plenty would be sad to see the F1 Manager series disappear, many more won't even notice.
The real question is if anyone would bother to pick up the license in their place. Codemasters' F1 game is struggling with stagnation and would perhaps benefit from adding a Team Principal mode.
Sports Interactive is going from strength to strength with Football Manager, could they add an F1 Manager title now that they are using Unity in-house? It seems unlikely.
Unless F1 is determined to keep a second major game on the market and lower their license fee, it is hard to find any way that F1 Manager will continue past 2025 and Frontier's final release of their agreement.