Own a
Football
Club

Greetings COs! It’s time for your monthly dose of Formation Games’ news and updates.

Game development

We’ve been super busy again this month, working on the core building blocks of the game.

Our tech team has been working flat-out on the backend services to ensure that our game will run like a well-oiled machine, much like Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal (to the pain of the Formation Games Spurs contingent)! Don’t worry, we won’t bore you with all the technical details, but this work is critical in ensuring the game is lightning fast, reliable and works efficiently as a global live service. Yes, didn’t you hear? We’re going truly global with CLUB!

This is a significant step towards producing the next working version of the game.

Growing our studio

We’ve been expanding our team at Formation Games too to ensure that we have the right people in place to take CLUB to the next level, and we’ve been fortunate enough to bring on some seriously talented folks. We’ve even had to double our office space just to accommodate everyone!

We’re particularly proud of our recent hires in the design department, where we’re levelling up our design team, including a UI/UX specialist to make sure the game looks and feels great. We want our players to have a fantastic — but distinct — experience, and we know that starts with a well-designed interface.

And that’s not all — we have also enlisted the help of some truly world-class games veterans to advise us on realising our vision. This includes promotion and creative, through to commerce and tech. In other words, we’ve assembled our own Avengers team to ensure that CLUB is the ultimate Club Ownership entertainment experience.

(We even debated who would be the Captain America of the team, but we won’t bore you with this particular office debate!)

Speaking of joining our team, our Multi-Media Marketing Apprentice is closing soon. It’s a fantastic entry-level role for anyone looking to break into the games industry and/or marketing. Check out this link to find out more and apply: https://www.findapprenticeship.service.gov.uk/apprenticeship/1000145695

BAFTA Game Awards

We’re very proud that not one, but two team members of Formation Games were invited onto judging panels at this year’s BAFTA Game Awards. Our CEO, Jonty was judging Best Game and our EP, Neil was one of the judges for Debut Game of the Year. You can see the results here and despite offers of free cups of tea and countless Yorkshire Burritos (yes, these are real), neither Jonty or Neil disclosed who they voted for. Professional until the very end.

Congratulations to all this year’s winners!

Her Game Too

March was a month of celebration for our community partner Her Game Too. They marked International Women’s Day with new initiatives at clubs all around the country. These included pre-match celebrations and opportunities for female fans to attend games for the first time, supported by other women.

Southampton became the latest Premier League side to sign up to Her Game Too and, at Everton, Seamus Coleman and Gabby George have become the first Premier League and Barclays Women’s Super League players official advocates of the project.

We’re proud to have had Her Game Too as an in-game sponsor in Season Zero and will continue to feature them in the new version of the game. To celebrate this partnership, and International Women’s Day, we’re giving away a Her Game Too sweatshirt to someone in our community. To enter, head over to the Giveaways channel in our Discord.

Discord quizzes

Speaking of Discord, have you joined the CLUB yet? Our Discord community is a lively bunch of COs who love talking about football, playing games, and competing with each other.

We also host a monthly quiz that will really put your football knowledge to the test. And if you’re the champion of the month, you’ll be rewarded with some exclusive CLUB merch that will make your friends jealous.

So, if you think you know ball, join us for the next monthly quiz on April 22nd, and test your knowledge against some other football fanatics.

Newcastle Independent cup final

Last but not least, we would like to extend our congratulations to our shirt partners, Newcastle Independent FC, who have made it to the final of the Northumberland FA FSOA Benevolent Bowl.

We’ll be heading up to Newcastle on Friday, 28th April for a 7pm kick-off, to cheer them on to glory. If you’re in the area and want to join us, get in touch, and we’ll sort you out with a ticket!.

That’s it for now, COs. Have a great Easter and we’ll be in touch again soon.

Until next time,
Formation Games Team

Welcome COs to our monthly update of all things going on at Formation Games. 🎮

Game development

Our team continues to be busy developing CLUB, our forthcoming Football Ownership Game. We’re currently focussed on perfecting our core gameplay loop or, in other words, making sure CLUB has the right blend of features to make it unputdownable!

While we’re working on this, we’d like to invite some COs into the office to meet the team. We’ll get to know you a bit better and understand what you currently like, or dislike, about other games you play. In exchange for picking your brains, we’ll pay for your travel and fill you up with pizza — seems a fair deal? 🍕

We will confirm a date shortly but if this is something you fancy, and you can make it into central London reasonably easily, please follow this link to express an interest: CLUB Open Office

Help us make a sustainable game

All of us at Formation Games are committed to creating a sustainable business and we believe we have a responsibility to minimise our impact on the planet.

We have signed up to Gamesforest to help us to meet this pledge. Through Gamesforest we will support a forestry project which will help offset our carbon emissions as a studio. We want our community to help decide the project that we support.

We’ve narrowed it down to three:

Tietê Forests, Brazil
The Tietê river in the Atlantic Biome is one of the most polluted rivers in Brazil. WeForest and AES Brasil are collaborating to restore the forest on the edges of the Tietê river and its tributaries with native species, protecting water bodies from soil siltation and runoff from herbicides and pesticides. The project is also providing a testing ground for pioneering restoration approaches that aim to reduce the use of herbicides.

Ethiopia Desa’a
The Desa’a Forest is one of the oldest remaining dry afromontane forests in Ethiopia. Over 26,000 people live below the poverty line here, relying on the forest for water, energy and to feed their cattle. This ambitious, award-winning project aims to restore and protect arid afromontane and bring water back to this region, which is directly threatened by desertification coming from the north, and lift the rural communities out of extreme poverty.

Protecting Peru’s Secret Forest
The Amazon rainforest is home to jungle giants that house sedate sloths, playful monkeys and secretive jaguars, and store large amounts of carbon which is essential for a healthy climate on our earth. Wilderness International buys these wilderness areas and protects them as undisturbed unique ecosystems, only visiting them for research and education projects. Local forest guardians protect them from mining, logging, agriculture and hunting and, in turn, they gain a sustainable income.

Please follow this link to vote for the one you think we should support.

Apprenticeship opportunity

We’re looking for a Multi-Media Marketing Apprentice to join our team. This is a great opportunity for someone looking to break into the games industry. A love of sports is a must (obviously!) and this role will involve some time in the office so the applicant would need to be in, or close to, the London area.

If this sounds like you, we’d love to hear from you! All the details, including how to apply, can be found here.

Newcastle Independent FC flying high

As you may recall, the CLUB logo sits proudly across the shirts of grassroots club Newcastle Independent FC.

NIFC are in their seventh season and are living the club ownership dream. They’re currently challenging for the top spots in the Premier Division of the Northern Football Alliance League and have a massive cup semi-final coming up on 4th March for the FSOA Benevolent Bowl.

If they make it all the way to the final, we’ll be there to cheer them on and we’ll be inviting some COs to join us.

Shot or Not winners

Our new competition, Shot or Not, is proving tougher than we expected!

Every Friday, we give you six players and all you have to do is decide if each of them will have a shot on target during their match at the weekend. Simple right? Apparently not!

Only two winners so far, so congrats to community members Jackobusss and Arreaga_33 for beating the game! Your prizes are being made as we speak and will be on their way to you soon ;)

Keep an eye out for Shot or Not every weekend on Twitter and Discord, and maybe you’ll be one of our winners next time.

That’s it for now, with LOTS to look forward to! Have a great March COs. 🙌

Until next time,
Formation Games Team

Welcome to our first CLUB Community Update of 2023! And a belated Happy New Year to you all! 🎉

After an incredibly successful 2022, we’ve now moved into a period of building, testing and refining CLUB ready for our soft launch later this year. The CLUB Community has supported us every step of the way so we wanted to give you a bit more of a sense of what’s happening here at Formation Games during this quieter period.

Game Foundations

Last year was a whirlwind, in the best possible way! Our MLS and Season Zero tests provided us with invaluable feedback about our ‘player engine’, which we’ll be taking forward and developing, along with more features and a beautifully redesigned game interface.

With Season Zero over, we should take a moment to celebrate the COs who finished top in our first iteration of CLUB. So a big congratulations to our overall top three:

1. Sparta Kendal FC
2. Mercia North End
3. Real Arsanel Halendonia

…and well done to all of you who finished in the upper reaches of the table. Good work!

Season Zero showed us the appetite you have for stepping into the shoes of a club owner, with picking your players and assembling your team at the very heart of that.

We know you’re all missing playing CLUB, but we’re building for the long term, so a bit of time spent making sure we deliver on our vision is imperative. It also gives us more time to take your feedback into account, which is important to us. We’ll share more information about the building blocks of the game in future updates.

A busy transfer window!

We’re delighted to share that we’ve had a hugely successful January transfer window and added even more world class talent to our growing studio.

John Collins, is our new Creative Director and will lead the game design. John is a veteran in this space and joins us from Space Ape Games, where he was pivotal in growing the global mobile hit title Beatstar — the App Store’s most featured game in 2022.

Martin Korda is one of the most sought-after scriptwriters, narrative designers and story consultants in the games industry. He joins as Narrative Director having previously contributed to numerous critically acclaimed blockbusters including FIFA’s The Journey series, Destiny 2 and Need for Speed Rivals, among many more.

Our in-house development team is now complete with Ryan Moore joining as Lead Systems Engineer. He spent over four years at Sony, building the global analytics platform for PlayStation before joining Media Molecule to run their DevOps and server programming.

You can read more about our new hires here.

Want to join our dream team? We’re currently looking for a Lead UI/UX Designer so take a look at this job posting if that’s your niche.

How’s your ball knowledge?

While our developers get on with the business of developing, we intend to fill the time with some games and competitions for you. The first game has just launched on our socials — Shot or Not?

Every Friday, we’ll give you a selection of players and all you have to do is decide if each of them will have a shot on target during their match at the weekend. Simple right?

If you get all the answers correct, you’ll be in the pot to win a mystery CLUB prize which you can proudly show off to your friends and family as an indicator of your superior ball knowledge. You can enter via our Twitter or Discord channel (yes, you get a bonus entry if you enter via both!)

FIFA Tournament

We were one of 16 football communities invited to take part in the OneFootball FIFA Cross-Community Tournament on 30 January. CLUB was represented by one of our very own COs Jolly, who was edged out in the first round after a really tight match. Big respect to Jolly for taking part and we look forward to providing more of our COs with exclusive opportunities in the future.

What next?

The team has a busy couple of months ahead so don’t be surprised if we go quiet for a little while while we get on and build. We’re likely to need your input on aspects of the game from time to time so look out for surveys and requests for feedback in our Discord (and maybe some sneak peeks too…?)

On behalf of the Formation Games team, we thank you all for your support on this journey so far and look forward to sharing more with you soon!

Until next time,
Formation Games Team

FORMATION GAMES
First things first, it’s not sustainable for us to continue operating as a small start up. So, we’d like to introduce you to Formation Games. Our brand new games studio, of which CLUB will be its first title. Creating a studio supercharges the business; we’re entirely game first, laser focussed on building a compelling player experience.

But to build a new Games Studio, we needed to add a few more professionals to our team…

OUR TEAM
With a new studio, comes new faces. The team you are all familiar with — and speak to every day in Discord — will all form the founding team of Formation Games. However, we have some hugely exciting news.

First up, we are delighted to welcome Jonty Barnes as our full-time CEO.

About Jonty
Jonty started in the video game industry in 1989 at Bullfrog Productions, before Co-Founding Lionhead Studios with iconic titles including Black & White. This was followed by a move to the US to become Executive Producer at Bungie on Halo 3. He rose to the board at Bungie, running game development for over 10 years, growing it into a live service organisation with over 800 people. In 2018, he returned to the trenches of development as Destiny General Manager, growing the franchise to record numbers including multiple BAFTAs, DICE & TGA awards. Since Jonty’s early days in video games he always imagined building a football gaming studio, so joining the talent at CLUB was a natural conclusion when returning back to the UK.

Jonty’s an avid lifelong Spurs fan. Much to Tom’s delight. Mel less so.

Now Jonty is a truly world-class hire…but our news doesn’t end there. We’re also delighted to announce the signing of Neil Dejython as Executive Producer.

About Neil
Neil has over 22 years of games industry experience, including more than 14 years at Football Manager with SEGA’s Sports Interactive Studio where amongst a variety of roles, he led the Match Engine team.

Neil worked on EA’s FIFA Manager and for Sony PlayStation as Production Manager at the BAFTA award-winning studio Media Molecule. Neil was the first ever Project Manager for PlayStation’s global Game Analytics team, with work on brands including God of War, MLB The Show, The Last of Us, Death Stranding and more. Neil has contributed to multiple games which have been — and are still — enjoyed by many millions of players.

Neil is a full member and BAFTA award-winner with Media Molecule’s Dreams, and served as judge on the jury for the BAFTA Game Awards for Debut Game, as well as a Mentor for Limit Break; a mentorship program aimed at underrepresented people working in the UK games industry. He was also previously the Assistant Manager of the QPR Women’s team.

We told you. We’re bullish on creating an iconic game.

More you say? As Eddie Hearn would say… “go on then”…we’re also delighted to welcome Sam Deane, who led core-tech development on Football Manager. Sam spent 7 years at Sports Interactive, shipping FM across a variety of platforms followed by a stint at Sony PlayStation’s London Studio as Lead Engineer. He also worked at Peter Gabriels’ Real World recording studio and the world famous Abbey Road Studios; at last, someone to diversify our studio music playlist. He’ll be working closely with Fred Wright, our CTO at Formation Games.

As you can appreciate, a huge amount of work has gone into hiring world-class talent forefronted by a football, AAA & BAFTA award-winning team.

IN-HOUSING
Previously we outsourced a lot of our engineering and development work. We’re thankful to all our partners who have helped us get this far, including the release of Season Zero which hundreds of you have enjoyed playing over the past few months. However with Fred, Sam and others at the helm, we’re delighted to now be in-housing our tech team to create a truly world-class live service game studio.

WHEN WILL CLUB RETURN?
We mentioned in our previous community update, the game will be paused during the World Cup. After careful consideration, we’ve also taken the decision to stop supporting the current Season Zero build thereafter too. Season Zero was primarily to test the tech behind the Player Engine, the matchday scoring system and to get valuable input from our community. Well, the tech has been validated and the response has been really positive to our scoring system. Whilst some tweaking may be in order as we move forward, the focus of our whole team and community now turns to our future game and the ownership experience.

Whilst we know some of you will be disappointed that you won’t be able to try and reach that elusive 100 Club this season, just know that we’ll be back. Bigger, better and bolder than ever.

Our timelines haven’t changed. Soft Launch, beginning of the 23/24 season remains our goal. Know that we’re charging towards it at full speed…just with a more polished and rounded F2P game.

BETWEEN NOW & LAUNCH
As alluded to above, it’s not just the team’s attention that’ll be focussed on our future game, it’s our community too. Your input to date has been invaluable, and we mean it. We won’t just be taking you on the journey with us up to soft-launch, you’ll be pivotal in our decisions and design.

Our COs can expect to comment and feed into UI, art and game features through to more elaborate concepts we have up our sleeves. What we can say is we’ll be committing to a Community Summit in 2023, a chance for all our community & our team to get together and for us to share our direction of travel & progress with the game. More details on this early next year.

WEN LAMBO?
In line with levelling up our game, we’re also supercharging our art & design. Therefore for the sake of giving you drops now, we’d like to wait until the art matches our vision for the next gen build of the game which we believe will provide you with truly world-class items. They’ll also accompany a game of the same quality too.

Therefore Lambos, MLS Kits, Club Clash Kit prizes etc.. will all be on hold as we improve designs in-line with our future vision. As our shirt deliveries to 58 countries around the world demonstrate; we work hard to keep & deliver on our promises.

A THANK YOU
To all our COs who have played and supported our game so far. We will continue to work hard for you to bring you a truly disruptive free-to-play Club Owner social experience.

You’re now part of something bigger than a game, you’re an extension of our Independent Game Studio, brought to you by a world class Football & Games industry winning team and we wouldn’t have got here without you.

You can follow our new studio, Formation Games for news & updates across our socials:
FG Twitter
FG IG
FG TikTok
FG LinkedIn
FG Website

Until next time, COs

̶C̶L̶U̶B̶ ̶T̶e̶a̶m̶
Formation Games Team

The moment has arrived.

It was the end of May when we announced we’d be sending out a physical CLUB shirt to any Founding CO that requested one. Five months later, it’s an absolute joy to see the first shirts arriving with you.

There has been a lot of work in those five months to make this a reality. From finding the right manufacturer, to honing the design, sourcing some clever, recyclable packaging and figuring out how to deliver nearly 900 shirts to 58 different countries around the world. Quite the task!

The shirt drop wasn’t part of our initial roadmap — and hasn’t replaced or distracted from work going into the game — but it’s something we wanted to do as a thank you to those of you who have supported us from the very beginning. We hope it’s also a little insight into who we are and how we intend to operate as a studio, with our community at its heart.

The design

The shirts feature a subtle fully sublimated map of the world, a nod to our COs from all around the globe. This is coupled with fully sublimated CLUB branding, an embroidered hem badge and unique ‘manufacturer’ mark; a bespoke design in homage to our first ever physical kit, which provides an embossed, tactile feature to the shirt.

The shirts are Premier League quality. Literally. Having been produced in the exact same factory as shirts worn week-in, week-out by players in The Premier League & La Liga (hence the slightly tighter fit). Teams are confidential 🤫

Whilst there’s been a slight delay on delivery, quality is one thing we won’t compromise on and we’ve been through a number of rounds of changes on the map to ensure it’s visible but also subtle; a hard balance to achieve. We’ve also improved some of the other detailing including the collar and stitching.

The packaging

We know that unboxing a shirt is an experience in itself so we wanted to put a little of our personality into the packaging too. Sorry to the United fans amongst you 😉

Waste in the fashion industry is significant. We don’t intend to add to it now, or in the future. We’ve used recycled packaging and avoided product waste by making the shirts to order for each and every one of our Founding COs who completed the form.

Whilst we have done everything in our power to ensure kits arrive at doorsteps without any issues, inc. covering custom fees, the customs processes in each country are unfortunately out of our hands, as are delivery times once in the local countries which may be affected by local strikes etc… We’ll do our best to help if you do experience any issues which you can let us know about here or in Discord.

So, what’s next?

As outlined in our recent post on Twitter & Discord, our COs are due a proper update on everything CLUB so we will be providing a full update next month. Lots going on behind the scenes!

In the meantime, we look forward to seeing you rocking those shirts on socials. Please tag us in any posts and use the hashtag #ClubGame

Of course the big decision now is: do you wear it or frame it…?

Until next time,

CLUB Team

When we first formed CLUB, it was always our ambition to sponsor a football club. One whose values and philosophy not only align with us as a business, but also a club that we knew would capture the imagination of our community and team.

So when we were offered the opportunity to sponsor a football club in Newcastle, whilst excited, we thought it might be too early after less than 12 months into our journey.

That was, until we spoke to Simon Mooney & Patrick Leonard from Newcastle Independent FC (NIFC). ⚽

An independent club from Newcastle with a dream of making it to the top. Not only did they love the vision of CLUB, they were living it. They wanted to experience club ownership, create a new model for the way in which clubs are run and as the saying goes, the rest is history…

Now in their 7th season, NIFC have been promoted 5 out of the last 6 seasons and are just 10 promotions from the Premier League. Imagine….Newcastle Independent FC v Newcastle Utd.

Their previous season’s achievements include the prestigious treble, where NIFC won the league and two cups at a canter. Formed of local players, including a Joiner, Barman, DJ, Promotor and Artist, the club currently sit 3rd in the Northern Football Alliance League, just 9 points behind top.

We’re incredibly proud to be playing a small part in their journey and who knows, maybe in years to come, our COs will be picking Newcastle Independent FC players on CLUB.

This is the first of many instances where CLUB will support and giveback to the game throughout the league system. We’ll be sharing NIFC’s journey across our socials and you can also check out the Grassroots channel in our Discord for updates on their promotion push.

An Away day to Newcastle is also being arranged where all are welcome but in the meantime…UP THE GOAT 🐐 🐐 and welcome to CLUB! 🙌

NIFC Socials:
NIFC Twitter
NIFC YouTube
NIFC TikTok
NIFC IG

It’s been exactly one year since we came together with a vision to create a new, revolutionary football game. We believed that football fans around the world wanted to step into the shoes of a football club owner and to experience the highs and lows of club ownership.

12 months on from imagining what CLUB might be, we’ve been blown away by the support. Especially considering we’re still a small (but growing) founding team that hasn’t yet flexed its marketing muscle at all. Some highlights include:

1 Year Old Achievements

It began with a vision
We’re football gamers ourselves and we’ve been inspired by some of the best features of the games we all love and play, but we also have a vision of reimagining game experiences for players. We believe in free-to-play and players helping to shape games and share in the rewards.

So, with that vision in mind, we drank a lot of coffee, pulled together some of the best brains in the business and started to hatch our plans…

Community first
Our Discord community grew rapidly and is a vibrant community of football fans — the perfect place to chew over the weekend’s results, football gossip and compare your rank in the game.

As we began to talk about the game our social following grew too — 170,000+ across all our platforms (TikTok, Twitter & IG) and people are now keeping an eye on CLUB with our engagement stats growing daily. 35,000+ even took the extra step to pre-register for the game.

This is all more or less organic too. Wait until we move out of 1st gear.

Press start to play
We sold Founding Clubs (our VIP passes) to our keenest community members — over 1,700 of them. Our Founders are helping us to test different elements of the game as we move towards a public soft launch next year, and they are holding onto those VIP Passes tightly with less than 0.5% on sale at the moment — diamond hands indeed!

After seven European gameweeks, we’ve seen over 15,000 transfers, seven different clubs at the top of the leaderboard and 201 clubs scoring over 100 (the Holy Grail for our COs!). We’ve seen some of the biggest content creators in the space pick up the game organically and hundreds of you create your own clubs across Twitter & Instagram, already starting to create the backstory behind your own football club. We love seeing this.

Oh, and we closed a $3.1M seed round in July with some of the brightest minds in Web3, gaming & football.

BUT, we’re just getting started! The game you see today is ~12% of our final vision. We’ve been very understated in putting ourselves out there, but when we do, we promise we’re going to make a splash.

We’ll be back in due course with an update on what’s on the horizon but in the meantime, thanks for your support over the last year. We say ‘thank you’ a lot but we really do mean it.

Last but not least, the limited edition physical CLUB shirts that you’ve been waiting for? Well they’re on their way to us from the factory now so all being well, these will leave CLUB HQ in October, delivering to Founding Clubs around the world. These will only go out to those who completed the form earlier in the year. If you’ve moved house since filling out the form please get in touch with us at [email protected] by 7th October so we can amend your details.

What a 12 months it’s been and here’s to the next 12, COs!

CLUB Team

What a 24 hours! The Lionesses roared their way to European triumph and now…some big CLUB news for our Club Owners (COs)!

The MLS Test has finished. As a team we learnt a lot, mainly that our knowledge of MLS players’ is woeful. More importantly however, we loved watching our Founding Club Owners test the Player Engine and receiving tons of fantastic feedback. Thank you!

With the MLS Test coming to end, it’s now time to test the Player Engine out in Europe.

Did someone say SEASON ZERO?

What is Season Zero?
From the beginning we’ve outlined our ambition to build a world class entertainment experience. This takes time. So whilst the MLS Player Engine Test was probably as little as 10% of the final game, Season Zero will start with about 12% of the final game we envisage. Throughout the season we’ll be learning, testing, learning, retesting and of course…building! And we’ll be doing it together. We want Season Zero to be an exciting experience where COs get to know - and help shape - the game you want to play for decades. We will start with a relatively simple feature list, with updates dropped over the course of the season.

Season Zero is a season-long playing experience for our Meta & Gold Founding Club Owners. On an invitational basis we’ll also be opening up to other players from our waiting list. To join the waiting list, sign up on the website now.

An important thing to note is that unlike future seasons where your club progress will continue indefinitely, there will be a reset of your squad at the end of Season Zero. This shouldn’t change your club’s ambition however; there’s super exclusive prizes up for grabs, your competitive rank to secure, Season Zero trophies, achievements plus lots more 👀. Our community means everything to us and our COs can be confident they’ll be getting some of the coolest items to build their club and/or trade with other players later on. What’s the point of being early if you don’t get swag to flex in future? Hey….there may even be a few surprises along the way too.

Downloading and Logging In
In the coming days, Founding Club Owners will need to download the latest version of the app. This can be done in the same way as the MLS Player Engine Test. Founding COs will receive an email from TestFlight in due course when Season Zero is ready to download.

Approval times by App & Play stores are out of our control so first access to Season Zero for iOS & Android Founding Club Owners may well be on different days (Android is typically available beforehand). If any issues, contact us via email or open a support ticket in Discord.

For those who are not Founding Club Owners, if you receive an email from TestFlight, you’ve been selected to test in Season Zero and can follow the steps above.

Key Features at beginning of Season Zero
CLUB now features all players from the EPL and select teams from Europe:

To provide balance between the leagues, a scoring modifier based on the UEFA Coefficient is used (a goal in EPL is currently worth more than Ligue 1 for example as shown below). We will be testing this thoroughly!

We have introduced a simple substitution feature for the start of Season Zero. A maximum of 3 substitutions can be made during the gameweek. This means you can play actively during the gameweek to improve your team! A substitution can be made at any time before the gameweek ends.

As substitutions are available, COs will now be required to have 16 players in their Squad. 2 GK, 5 Def, 5 Mid, 4 Fwds.

The starting budget is currently 650M for Clubs.

What else is new?
Clubs will now open the game to find their starter stadium. It ain’t much, but it’s yours! Over time, COs will be able to upgrade their stadium to match their ambitions.

COs can now choose a starter kit and badge. There will be opportunities to customise and upgrade the look and feel of your club through gameplay. Founding COs will have their founding kits/badges available shortly.

Gameweek Dates
We will now be moving to more consistent deadlines: the CLUB gameweek will run from 5pm UTC Friday to 9am UTC Friday (6pm &10am BST).

We may vary this from time to time, should the football calendar warrant a change. The Next Gameweek screen will display the gameweek start time in the local time set on your phone. Not a bad set of games to get us underway either! 👇

Rules
Full rules are available in the app by clicking the “?” from the Live/Next Gameweek screen.

For the opening weeks of the test COs will be able to make unlimited transfers each week. We want to let COs experiment early on, and also this makes it easier to keep the show on the road if any bugs are encountered early.

Be aware that performance in the opening gameweeks will likely be used to seed placings when the divisional ranking system opens (details coming soon).

A captain gives a 50% bonus to a players score.

Cover System. A player being used outside of his primary role will receive a -25% scoring penalty e.g if Harry Maguire were used as a LB rather than as a CB. The game clearly highlights players in their optimal role in green when placed on the pitch. Amber means they are suffering a penalty for “covering” a role they would not normally play.

As always, notes on known bugs & limitations plus more patch notes can be found in our Discord.

Let’s Go!
So, Season Zero is almost here. A lot of blood, sweat and tears have gone into getting us to this point in such a short space of time. We can’t wait to continue testing and building with our community! 👊 #ClubGame