Dev Diary

The ManageFC development diary: how a free football management game is being built, month by month since March 2026 — decisions, bugs and fixes.

The blog in numbers

Posts published67

Categories6

Months of history8

Posts

A pyramid of ten divisions with division 10 highlighted at the bottom

Dev DiaryOctober 2026

Division 10 is not a wall any more

The bottom of the pyramid was supposed to be the easy part. It was not: the teams around you played like champions, and the free agents who would sign for you never appeared. We fixed both, and played the climb ourselves.

21 October 20262 min read

The new dashboard: the head coach in charge of the team, the season objectives, and the next match

Dev DiaryOctober 2026

ManageFC 3.0: why we closed the game, and what we rebuilt

For a few days ManageFC was closed while we rebuilt how a career works: the calendar, the money of every club, the way a season ends and the way the game talks to you. Here is what changed, side by side with what was there before.

11 October 20263 min read

The stadium ladder, from a dirt pitch for 100 people up to 200,000 seats

Dev Diary

Starting from nothing: division 10 and a dirt pitch

New careers now begin at the very foot of the pyramid, in division 10, on a dirt pitch for about a hundred people. Here is what that start looks like and why we chose it.

10 October 20262 min read

The new ManageFC homepage with a floodlit stadium, a globe and the feature cards

Dev DiarySeptember 2026

A new front door, and a blog

September ended with a new homepage, a fresh look at what a first-time visitor needs to know, and this blog. Where the story stands today — and what we are working on next.

1 October 20262 min read1

The ManageFC wiki article about formations and how they match up

Dev DiarySeptember 2026

Rewriting the guide and wiki with real numbers

A guide is only useful if it is precise. In late September we went through the player guide and the wiki chapter by chapter, replacing vague advice with the actual numbers the game uses — and removing every sentence the game did not support.

1 October 20262 min read

A floodlit ManageFC stadium, the building at the centre of the club's new 3D home

Dev DiarySeptember 2026

The dressing room, and knowing when to start over

In late September the dashboard gained a 3D dressing room with kits painted in your colours. Then we built a walkable club building around it — and two days later knocked it down, because the idea itself was wrong.

1 October 20262 min read

The ManageFC tactics board in 3D with players placed on the pitch in the club's colours

Dev DiarySeptember 2026

3D where it helps — the season rail and the tactics board

After the stadium, we asked a stricter question: where does 3D actually help you understand your club? Two answers shipped in September — a season you can see at a glance, and a tactics board you can move by hand.

1 October 20262 min read

A fully built level 10 ManageFC stadium at night with the club crest on the centre circle

Dev DiarySeptember 2026

A stadium that grows with you

The first piece of the new visual direction was the stadium: a 3D ground that goes from a single stand and a shed to a three-tier arena across ten levels, with your own crest on the centre circle.

1 October 20262 min read

The ManageFC squad screen before and during the September redesign, side by side

Dev DiarySeptember 2026

We redesigned the whole game — then rolled it back

In two days in September we gave the whole game a cleaner, more data-dense look — and then decided it was the wrong game. Why we rolled the redesign back, what we kept, and the direction we took instead.

1 October 20262 min read

Pages of ManageFC shown side by side at desktop and phone widths

Dev DiarySeptember 2026

Half the game is played on a phone

A time-skip game fits naturally into a few minutes on the bus. In September we made the phone an equal citizen: a menu that always closes, text you can read, buttons you can hit, and a check that every page passes before it goes live.

1 October 20262 min read

The ManageFC inbox Crises tab with a decision waiting for the manager

Dev DiarySeptember 2026

Crises scaled to your division

A crisis that costs a top-flight club pocket change can bankrupt a small one. In September we made every crisis scale with the size of your club — same weight, different numbers — and fixed a button that did not close what it said it would.

1 October 20262 min read

A ManageFC league table with clubs ordered by points

Dev DiarySeptember 2026

The day the league tables froze

Once in a while, a matchday would hesitate: several results trying to update the same league table at the same moment, getting in each other's way. In September we found the pattern and changed the order in which matches are completed.

1 October 20262 min read

A small ManageFC stadium with a single stand, the kind of ground a lower-division club plays in

Dev DiarySeptember 2026

Why you start in division 3

We wanted every career to start at the very bottom of the pyramid, in division 10. Then we measured what a division 10 club earns — and found it could not pay its players in the first week. Why the climb starts in division 3, for now.

1 October 20263 min read

A ManageFC match page showing the opponent's tactical setup before kick-off

Dev DiarySeptember 2026

AI clubs finally choose their tactics

For weeks, almost every AI club played with the same default tactics — and nobody noticed. In September we found out why, rebuilt how AI managers choose their style, and checked that the variety reaches every match.

1 October 20262 min read

The ManageFC tactics board with players arranged in formation

Dev DiarySeptember 2026

15,000 matches to answer one question — do tactics matter?

Every management game claims that tactics matter. In September we tested ours: thousands of simulated matches, one change at a time, against a measured noise floor. Some settings mattered a lot, some barely, and one turned out to be rock-paper-scissors.

1 October 20263 min read

The ManageFC guide and wiki pages, rewritten to describe only what the game does

Dev DiarySeptember 2026

We audited our own website — and deleted what was not true

In September we read our own website the way a sceptical player would, checked every claim against the game, and found that several of them were not true. Here is what we found, what we removed, and the rule we now follow.

1 October 20263 min read

The ManageFC morale screen with clear labels and numbers

Dev DiarySeptember 2026

Every word on screen, checked

Months after we moved to English only, odd words were still turning up on screen. In September we reviewed every piece of text in the game, one by one, and checked our privacy promises in the same pass.

1 October 20262 min read

A ManageFC match report showing the score, shots and possession

Dev DiarySeptember 2026

Recalibrating goals and morale

In early September we put the match engine through thousands of simulated games and found three problems — too few goals, shots counted wrongly, and stronger teams not winning often enough. How we fixed them without touching anything else.

1 October 20263 min read

The ManageFC time-skip progress bar advancing a world by several days

Dev DiaryAugust 2026

From eight minutes to eighty-four seconds

Skipping a week in a ten-league world used to take around eight and a half minutes. By the end of August it took eighty-four seconds — without cutting a single corner in the simulation. Here is where the time was going.

1 October 20262 min read

A club crest painted on the centre circle of a ManageFC stadium

Dev DiaryAugust 2026

One crest, everywhere

Some managers saw two different crests for their own club, depending on the screen. In August we made the crest you design in the badge designer the only crest the game ever draws — on every page, in every match and, later, in 3D.

1 October 20262 min read

The ManageFC live match viewer with the pitch, players and possession bar

Dev DiaryAugust 2026

Stepping into a live match

Most matches play out while you are away. In August we made it possible to step into any of your own matches and manage it live, five minutes at a time — without ever giving live play an advantage over the instant result.

30 September 20262 min read

The ManageFC matches screen showing one league matchday per week

Dev DiaryAugust 2026

A season is 245 days

Our seasons used to follow the calendar year, which meant leagues ran out of weeks before they ran out of fixtures. In August we redesigned the season around a rhythm football fans recognise: one league matchday a week, thirty of them, in 245 days.

30 September 20262 min read

A ManageFC squad list showing players of different ages and positions

Dev DiaryAugust 2026

Players now age like players

A believable football world needs believable squads: mostly young and prime-age players, a few veterans, almost nobody past 38. In August we rebuilt how ages are generated, and how much money each club starts with.

30 September 20263 min read

The ManageFC registration page where new managers create their account

Dev DiaryAugust 2026

When registration broke — a post-mortem

In August some new managers signed up, founded a club and ended up in a world without one. While fixing it, we broke registration itself for about ten minutes. What happened, how we fixed it, and the check that now runs after every update.

30 September 20262 min read

The ManageFC new-save wizard building a world in the background

Dev DiaryJuly 2026

A quieter month under the hood

July had no headline feature. It had better record-keeping, a save wizard that finally finished what it started, a world builder that recovers on its own — and one trade-off we made for speed and later reversed.

30 September 20262 min read

The ManageFC settings screen where two-factor authentication is switched on

Dev DiaryJune 2026

A security review in June

After a spring of big changes, we paused new features in June and reviewed the security of the whole service. What we can share about how we did it, what it changed, and what you can do to protect your own account.

30 September 20262 min read

The ManageFC finance hub showing balance, revenue and wages

Dev DiaryMay 2026

Your money, your units — currencies and expense periods

A wage of 20,000 a week means something different to a manager in Lisbon, London or São Paulo. In May we let every manager read the game's money in one of 31 currencies — and in the time unit that makes sense to them.

30 September 20262 min read

The ManageFC league table of a division 3 league in a generated world

Dev DiaryMay 2026

Build your own world — 211 countries, up to 40 leagues

In late May the new-save wizard learned to build a world to order — your base country's pyramid plus up to 37 more leagues from anywhere. Testing a full season afterwards found three bugs that only appear when time moves in big steps.

30 September 20263 min read

The ManageFC dashboard with the time-skip control that advances the world

Dev DiaryMay 2026

The bug that made time stand still

Days after the new private worlds went live, players pressed "advance" and nothing happened. The cause was a single calculation — and behind it, sixteen routines the new time engine had never been asked to run.

30 September 20262 min read

The ManageFC new-save wizard where every manager now starts a fresh world

Dev DiaryMay 2026

Rebuilding the game around private saves

Three days in May, a maintenance page, a full backup, and one hard decision: the old shared world would not be carried over. How the game learned to keep every world separate — and why existing managers started again.

30 September 20262 min read

The ManageFC saves screen listing a private world

Dev DiaryMay 2026

The pivot — from one online world to a private world per save

On 14 May we stopped patching the always-online world and redesigned the game around a simple idea: your world is yours, and time only moves when you press the button. This is the biggest decision in ManageFC's history.

30 September 20263 min read

The ManageFC tactics screen with the substitution plan and set-piece tabs

Dev DiaryMay 2026

Substitution plans, set-piece takers and a proper Christmas break

If you are not watching the match, you still need a say in it. In mid-May we gave managers substitution plans the engine follows, named set-piece takers who actually take the kicks, varied press conferences and a winter break that feels like football.

30 September 20263 min read

The ManageFC inbox with notifications about matches, transfers and the board

Dev DiaryMay 2026

The inbox is the heart of the game

In a game where you skip days at a time, the inbox is how the world talks to you. In May we rebuilt it around a single library of a thousand message templates — and a rule that every system has to speak through it.

30 September 20263 min read

The ManageFC inbox with every message written in English

Dev DiaryMay 2026

Why ManageFC is English-only for now

We once offered the game in dozens of languages, most of them automatic translations nobody had read. In May we chose one language we could stand behind — here is why, and what it cost.

30 September 20262 min read

The ManageFC dashboard, calm and without timers or reward tracks

Dev DiaryMay 2026

Why we deleted our battle pass

By May the game had quietly collected a battle pass, a busy social feed and a stack of daily nudges. We audited them against the reason we started the project — and deleted most of them in a single day.

30 September 20263 min read

The ManageFC two-factor authentication prompt guarding the in-game wallet

Dev DiaryApril 2026

Two-factor authentication for anything that touches money

Even in a free game, the parts of an account that hold currency and items deserve a second lock. In April we made two-factor authentication a requirement for the six screens that deal with them.

30 September 20262 min read

The ManageFC matches calendar showing fixtures laid out across a month

Dev DiaryApril 2026

The first version — a world that ran on a clock

Our first ManageFC was one shared online world where matches kicked off at fixed times, whether you were there or not. In April we learned what that really means — starting with every match in the world kicking off at midnight.

30 September 20262 min read

A floodlit stadium in a city at dusk, the first image of the ManageFC story

Dev DiaryMarch 2026

Why we're building ManageFC

The idea is older than the website. In March 2026 the site went online for the first time — here is what we wanted the game to be, and the one rule that survived every rewrite since.

30 September 20262 min read1

About Dev Diary

The Dev Diary is the story of ManageFC told in order, from the first version that went online in March 2026 to the game as it is today. Each entry covers a month or a single moment and is written from our own records: what we shipped, what broke, what we measured and what we decided.

We are deliberately honest about the parts that went badly. The diary includes the always-online world we replaced with a private world per save, the day the league tables froze, the week registration broke and the redesign we rolled back. A diary that only reports successes would be an advert, and you would be right not to trust it.

New to the series? Start with Why we're building ManageFC and follow the link at the end of each entry, or open the timeline to jump to a particular month. Every entry carries two dates: the period it covers and the day it was published here.