Football Manager 27 to Offer Five Days Free Play Before Full Release in ‘Industry First

You can play Football Manager 27 on PC and Mac for free this year for five full days later this month, in a first for the series and apparently an “industry first” for games of its kind.

The free period itself will start on 29th October at 6pm GMT, and run until its typical paid ‘launch preview’ period starts on the 3rd November, which is available to those who pre-order the game before its full launch on 10th November.

“Making an annual title free to play with all game modes available is believed to be an industry first and is a move that continues Sports Interactive’s efforts to support its community of players,” a studio press release says.

The news comes in an unusually quiet pre-launch period for developer Sports Interactive, and after the especially rough year of FM26, which despite steady player numbers still sits at a ‘Mostly Negative’ Steam user score, almost a full year after its launch.

That game was the first in two years, after Sports Interactive took the extraordinary step of cancelling the release of FM25 while it moved the game over to the Unity game engine from its own internal one. The result was new systems that the developer says weren’t possible in previous versions of the game – notably the quite sophisticated system of splitting out in- and out-of-possession formations and tactics – at the expense of a huge number of classic features the developer couldn’t get working in time. That, and a reworked “cards and tiles” user interface that I and an awful lot of players found a bit of a nightmare to navigate.

It all makes for a huge year for the franchise. FM27 promises “an improved interface with more intuitive navigation, creating a more immersive experience,” as well as several new features such as Tactical Tweaks, which supplement the old, returning touchline shouts system. Whether they come off is likely to have a major impact on fans’ trust in the studio after a difficult couple of years. This five-day free period at least suggests Sports Interactive is feeling confident.

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Football Manager 27

Infinity Ward opened up early access to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4’s DMZ extraction mode overnight, meaning anyone who has pre-ordered a copy can now play the game’s campaign as well as DMZ. And while early reactions to DMZ are fairly positive, there’s one issue in particular, which a number of players have experienced, that has the capability of ending a round as soon as it begins.

The issue is to do with where DMZ spawns players. As an extraction shooter, DMZ’s Hajin map offers multiple random spawn locations, and unlike traditional többjátékos modes, DMZ spawns are often on the edges of the map – far away enough from any action to allow players a chance to strategise and pick a target destination.

But unfortunately, one of the spawn-points Infinity Ward picked happens to be placed in the middle of a road, meaning that if you’re unlucky, you might spawn as an enemy patrol is driving on it, flattening you and ending your round.

This nearly happened to Reddit user grillimperator, who was given a small window of time to jump out of the way. Reddit user Deep-Operation-3552, however, wasn’t so lucky, immediately falling to the ground as soon as they got control of their character after the infil cutscene. As others noted in the replies, the timing of the ‘Welcome to the DMZ’ voice alert playing just as they die makes it all the more absurd. Judging by those examples, at least, there doesn’t appear to be any form of spawn protection.

DMZ offers certain options to get back up after being downed, but if you don’t have the necessary equipment, there’s nothing you can do. Still, that wouldn’t have mattered in the above instances, because the players were run over twice.

Given the persistent nature of DMZ, dying also means losing everything you entered the match with, which could be infuriating if that was the round you decided to pack your good gear.

Thankfully, the bug is one of several issues Infinity Ward fixed in a new DMZ patch. The patch notes specifically called out the problem: “Fixed some instances where enemy AI could run over players while infilling.”

Modern Warfare 4’s final mode, traditional többjátékos, unlocks at the game’s full launch this Friday, 23rd October on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Switch 2. So far, players appear to be happy with the game’s campaign, making it of the most well-received COD games on Steam. One player even managed to finish the campaign on its hardest, single-life mode YOLO.

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 (2026)