eFootball’s attempts at successfully transitioning Konami’s yearly football sim series into a free-to-play live service model haven’t gone as well as the Japanese publisher would have hoped. The game’s disastrous launch was followed by promises of upcoming fixes, and though the first of those was delayed, it is launching later today. That said, it looks like the road ahead is still going to be a bumpy one.
eFootball’s version 1.0.0 update was supposed to launch for all systems on November 11, but Konami has now announced quite a significant delay for it. It has now been pushed back to Spring 2022, with no firm release date announced yet. Konami says that the update – which will add new content to the game as well as support for mobile devices – requires more time in the over “to deliver the product in the quality that will meet the expectations” of players. One would imagine that the immediate need for critical fixes to the game as it exists right now will also have caused complications for future plans.
Meanwhile, eFootball’s Premium Player Pack, which was supposed to include items that would only have been usable once update 1.0.0 was live, has been cancelled as well. Anyone who pre-ordered it will automatically be refunded.
Konami concludes: “We will continue to improve and update our game. We will announce details of further updates and schedule for the mobile version later.”
eFootball is available, such as it is, on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, and PC.