Konami made the announcement on Friday, confirming that the development team of eFootball 2022 wouldn’t be able to meet its previously announced release date of November 11. The 1.0 release of eFootball 2022 will now arrive in Spring 2022, a delay of what’s likely several months. The extra time will allow Konami to continue releasing bug fixes for the existing version of eFootball 2022 available to the public, as well as necessary development time to meet the quality standards that soccer fans want.
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While Konami does apologize for the delay, it doesn’t explore the reasons why the delay was necessary. They should be self-evident, however, considering the current state of eFootball 2022 and players’ discontent. eFootball 2022’s initial launch state was full of significant bugs, which Konami has struggled to remedy since. Launching a major update while still leaving pressing issues unaddressed would only further anger players, so a delay seems both obvious and appropriate.
The 1.0 update of eFootball 2022 aims to include features like support for mobile platforms, the ability to create, play as, and grow an original team, and other content. Those plans haven’t changed, and Konami will continue rolling out updates between now and 1.0’s arrival in spring 2022. A patch was delivered on Friday, version .0.9.1, that claimed to fix several known bugs, though no date has been announced for the next planned update.
For eFootball 2022 players that purchased the game’s Premium Player Pack, Konami has announced that all purchases are being automatically canceled and refunded. The Premium Player Pack included in-game Chance Deals and in-game eFootball Coins currency, but would require the content in eFootball 2022’s 1.0 release to make full use of. It is worth noting that those who pre-ordered will have to re-download the free version of eFootball 2022. Save files and progress should be intact.
Obviously, this is a frustrating situation for all parties involved. In retrospect, it seems like eFootball 2022 would have been better off being delayed, rather than launching its free “demo” version to get ahead of FIFA 22’s launch. Given that this is the first release for the eFootball series under its new name, Konami has a big challenge ahead of itself if it wants to regain player trust.
eFootball 2022 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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