The full release of eFootball 2022 has been pushed back to next Spring, with refunds to be issued to purchasers of the game's premium pack.
In an announcement, Konami told fans that the 1.0 version of the game, originally scheduled to release next week, "has been postponed until Spring 2022." The developer says that it has "been working diligently towards distributing an update that will bring new content to the game [...] as well as support for mobile devices on November 11. Unfortunately, we have concluded that more time is needed to deliver the product in the quality that will meet the expectations of our users and have decided to postpone the delivery."
The delay means that Konami has decided to issue automatic refunds to players who pre-ordered the game's Premium Player Pack, as it contains in-game items that can only be used after the update.
A new, smaller update is available today, fixing "numerous bugs on each platform," but it won't tackle more significant gameplay faults. There's also no word on when the mobile version will launch, with details on that front to be announced later.
This is a significant blow for Konami's reboot of its long-running football series, which got off to a seriously rocky start amid an early access release last month. Marred by bugs, dodgy AI and even dodgier player likenesses, eFootball 2022 swiftly became the lowest-rated game ever on Steam. With a launch update intended to fix some of those issues now bumped halfway through the season, the title is likely to have a long and difficult road ahead of it.
For a sense of the progress Konami needs to make, check out our eFootball 2022 review.
