Is Football Manager 2021 coming to Google Stadia?

It’s becoming one of the biggest transfer sagas of 2021. Is Football Manager 2021 going to sign a new contract with Google Stadia? Or has it been sent packing? Nobody is quite sure.

FM21 came out on the PC/Mac last week (November 24th), but the new version has yet to drop on Google Stadia. Last year it was one of the Stadia launch games, available as soon as Stadia was in early November.

Sports Interactive, Football Manager’s studio, has done little to ease the confusion over whether FM21 will come to Stadia. As eagle-eyed fans on the official Football Manager forums spotted, the company made repeated mentions of the game coming to Google Stadia in trailers and promotional materials.

However, the Stadia icon has been scrubbed from the game’s website and mentions erased from trailers, which all looks a tad ominous.

SI’s head honcho refused to be drawn on whether FM21 was coming to Stadia when collared by a fan on Twitter last week, too:

If I were to hazard a guess about what’s going on, I suspect there’s some kind of contractual squabble going on between Sega (the game’s publisher) and Google, which has thrown the launch into doubt.

Whatever the case, it’s not a great situation for FM fans, who don’t know whether to invest in the PC game or wait for a Stadia release. Although it’s ostensibly the same game on Stadia (with a few annoying restrictions), you can’t use a PC licence on Stadia and vice versa.

FM21 failing to arrive on Stadia could work out even more expensive for some FM fans, as they might need a new laptop/PC to run FM21. The great advantage of Stadia is that it can run on practically any PC hardware as it streams the game from Google’s servers. I played FM20 extensively on Stadia and the performance was largely excellent. If that’s no longer an option, some gamers might find their PC isn’t up to the job.

Whatever the situation, some urgent clarity would be much appreciated.