Changelog

Free early access

Franchise Architect: Football is free to play in early access. It is complete enough to run a franchise for decades, and it changes often; every change is dated in the changelog.

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Every release note

Newest first. The status page carries the latest 4; subscribe with the RSS feed.

2026-10-25 — Follow-ups take you to the right place

Architect Focus follow-ups now take you to the controls they name: prepare your next week or weekly plan, review contracts and cap pressure, or review your next General Manager call.

League pulse cards now open League news on desktop and mobile.

2026-10-23 — The Desk fits your phone, and a passer rating means one thing

On a phone, the Desk no longer runs off the right edge of the screen. One control was forcing the whole column wider than the display, so every card was cut off on the right; the cards now fit, and that control wraps onto a second line when space is tight.

A quarterback's passer rating is now the same number everywhere. The box score had it right, but the season and career tables calculated it differently and read too low: a 300-for-450, 3,500-yard, 25-touchdown, 10-interception season showed 89.3 instead of 99.3, and a perfect rating topped out at 147.4 instead of 158.3. Every table now uses the box score's formula. Leagues you already have are rated from the same stats, so most passers now read higher, a strong season by up to about ten points; a backup who completed nearly every one of a handful of throws can read lower. No game result or stat has changed. A player with no pass attempts now reads 0 instead of 39.6.

2026-10-22 — Character update preview

This preview gives players smoother body contours based on their recorded height and weight, more detailed facial sculpting, and articulated feet during movement. Characters remain stylized. Fictional relatives share a family background and natural coloring while keeping individual faces, and their profiles identify the relationship. Existing players keep their recorded identities.

Scouting board and contract controls keep you in the action you chose; player names open the dossier. Saves preserve the same player and family details with less repeated data.

2026-10-03 — Your call on fourth down

You now set your club's standing orders for two game-day moments. On fourth down, choose Conservative, By the book or Aggressive to decide how often your offense stays on the field instead of punting or kicking. In the two-minute drill at the end of each half, when you are behind or tied, choose Protect the ball, Standard or Hurry-up: hurry-up gets more snaps and more throws before the break, while protect leans on the run. Your choices stay until you change them, and game replays mark two-minute-drill plays so you can watch your call play out.

Rival front offices now draft the way they build. A Moneyball or homegrown club will reach for a raw prospect with room to grow, while a win-now club takes the player who can help this season.

2026-10-02 — The league talks back

A new League Pulse on the League tab ranks every club each week, with arrows showing who climbed and who slid. Alongside it, the MVP, Defensive Player of the Year and Coach of the Year races update as the season goes on. When a player is on pace for a single-season record, or breaks one, you will see it there first.

The Desk now puts this week's calls beside the Front Office Advisor, which also previews your next opponent. Game replays show where the ball really is, with down and distance and a strip that tracks the score margin. Rival and free-agent potential is now a scouting estimate that firms up as players age; your own players stay exact. The Boardroom has an operating statement showing gate revenue, staff costs and how long your cash will last.

Across the game, labels and messages now read as football rather than engineering, and clubs are named by their own codes. GM archetypes now reflect how each front office actually operates, and the Contracts screen shows your real active cap. The site also has new Features, How to Play, FAQ and Roadmap pages, plus a changelog feed.

2026-10-01 — Your franchise survives the return trip

Browser play now preserves your chosen franchise across page navigation and reloads. If an action succeeds but its recovery checkpoint cannot be saved, a persistent warning lets you retry saving without repeating the action. Manual saves wait for storage confirmation, and failed replacements protect the previous save. Save a slot or export your franchise before closing the tab.

Trades containing draft picks now judge the value of the whole package for both clubs, and the same asset cannot be offered twice. The Front Office Advisor distinguishes choices it observed from weeks with no scored action. Your First Season Contract credits a free-agent signing only after your offer wins and the player joins your club.

Advice panels, charts and buttons are more readable in light and dark themes, including disabled controls while a franchise is opening.

2026-09-29 — A league that trades around you

Rival clubs can now trade with each other during the season, within the same roster, cap and deadline rules that govern your deals. Their moves enter League News, so the league can change even when you hold your own roster steady. The Team menu now opens one workspace for your roster and depth chart; a lineup call keeps its exact destination and keyboard focus. Your club crest also follows you into the League and trade market.

2026-09-28 — The front office talks back, rivals price you, and the game stops freezing while it simulates

The Overview is now the Desk, and it carries less: standings, results, leaders, the news feed, story threads, charts and long sims moved to a League tab beside it. On the Desk, a Front Office Advisor argues one call each week with the numbers behind it, and keeps score of how often you went against the room. New franchises get a First Season Contract, five things a first-year general manager gets judged on, ticked off from what you actually do. Your club has a crest.

Rival front offices now price trades by who they are: a win-now club accepts a wider band than a rebuilding one, a player at their real need carries a premium and a surplus position a discount, and the offer says so. The simulation now runs off the page thread on browsers that support it, so tabs answer while a season is simulating. Trophies, the season epilogue, the development report and a first-round pick can be shared as a card. The site has an About and FAQ page, a press kit, and a release-history archive. And the standings now show from week one: they used to read "No rows" for a franchise's entire first season, and last year's table after that.

On a phone, the front office now opens as six clear sections with the same destinations inside them. The First Season Contract can credit a trade you initiate yourself, then closes at the season review with an owner verdict based on the objectives you actually met.

2026-09-14 — You can now see who developed, and the draft board stops giving away the answers

Every offseason the game has always moved every player's overall, and then told you only how many retired and how many contracts ran out. Now the retirements stage says who on your club rose and who fell, the news feed carries it, and the History tab has an Offseason Development Report with each player's before and after, the change, and how much room he still has under his potential. Nothing about how players develop has changed; what changed is that you can finally see it.

Two smaller things follow from that. A player's profile outlook now reads his own potential and development trait, so a player with no room to grow no longer reads "surging" because his club has a nice facility, and the profile says how many seasons he has left to reach his ceiling, not just how many points. And the draft room's list of available prospects no longer prints every prospect's true overall and true potential beside the scouting board you spend points on: it prints your scouts' read of both. The engine still knows the truth, which is what the reveal you pay for gets you closer to. Your saved franchises are unaffected by all of this.

2026-09-13 — A player's potential now means the same thing at every position

In a brand-new league, potential used to be drawn the same way for every position, while overall is graded differently for each one. So about a third of every new league started out already above their own potential. That was most common at quarterback and on the offensive line, and it showed up on the player card as a negative development runway. Potential is now room to grow above where a player already is. It is larger for young players and for high-ceiling development traits, closes as a player reaches his thirties, and narrows as he nears the top of the scale. In a new league, no player starts past his own ceiling, and a quarterback's potential is read on a quarterback's scale.

We held this change back for a few days until we could confirm it does not make the whole league develop faster than it should. Player overalls in a new league are exactly what they were before. Only potential changed. Your existing saved franchises keep the potentials they already have.

2026-09-10 — Every club fields a real roster

Clubs used to choose their active squad by rating alone, and that is not how a football team is built. Over a decade of simulated seasons the league drifted badly: quarterback rooms tripled and clubs ended up dressing six quarterbacks and four kickers, while the offensive line and the front seven were quietly stripped out from under them. Every club now dresses a real depth chart, with a sensible minimum and maximum at each position, and the twelve remaining spots still go to the best players available — so roster quality is still a decision you make, it just cannot produce a team that could not take the field. The same protection applies when a club is clearing cap space: it can cut deep, but it can never cut itself below a line it can put out on Sunday.

New leagues start full. A brand-new league used to begin with every club about twenty players short of a complete roster and no practice squad at all, then spend the following decade filling in — which quietly distorted everything measured across those seasons. A new league now starts at a full active roster plus a full practice squad, and clubs are held to it in both directions: they cannot carry more than the rules allow, and they no longer drain below it season after season.

The draft supplies what clubs actually need. Every position used to receive an equal share of every draft class, regardless of how many of them a roster carries — so quarterbacks and specialists piled up year after year while linemen ran short, and it never corrected itself. Intake now tracks real demand. Punters are drafted like everybody else, instead of materialising out of nowhere the moment a club needs one.

The cap binds from the first snap. Filling out those rosters properly meant paying for them properly, so contracts at generation are now priced by role — starters and key backups on market deals, the back of the roster and the practice squad at the league minimum. A new league begins under a cap it can genuinely afford rather than one it is already over.

2026-09-09 — The rules the game was telling you about are real now

The trade deadline actually closes. Three different screens used to advertise three different deadline weeks for a rule the simulation never enforced, so the window "shut" and you could still make the same trade in Week 17. There is now one deadline, every screen reads it, and the other thirty-one clubs obey it too. The salary cap stopped being negotiable in the same way: a club with no room can no longer re-sign everyone anyway, and when a deal is signed for less than you offered, the game tells you the terms you actually got instead of just saying the player accepted.

Rewind works. Every rewind point the game saved was too large for the browser to store, so a feature you could see never actually worked — and restoring an old point could quietly destroy the position you were in a second earlier. Rewind states are now compressed the way saves already were, and a restore that cannot first save your current position is refused rather than performed blind. Older franchises and rewind points load unchanged.

Cap space you bank now carries forward. As the league's cap grew each year, the space you saved was being measured against the old cap, so by your sixth or seventh season "save this year to strike next year" had quietly stopped working. Coaching contracts run their declared length instead of burning two years every offseason, and your scouting, strength, medical and cap staff age and turn over like everyone else — rival clubs now build a real coaching identity over time rather than reshuffling every year.

Smaller things you will notice: the Cap Casualty team picker, the multiplayer lobby team picker and the commissioner intent queue were all visible controls that did nothing, and now work. Negative numbers — cap space, dead money — and the draft clock are readable in light theme. "Price the market" takes you to the deadline board instead of dropping you on a page with nothing on it. And a loaded franchise can no longer end up permanently unable to advance a week.

2026-09-03 — Your first season gets its ending

The first season you finish now delivers its full Architecture Review, season story and earned rewards instead of silently skipping them. Trophy Road keeps games in true season-and-week order, so a new year's opening result cannot be buried behind last year's Week 18. Records throughout the front office now show ties and count them correctly, and keyboard navigation on tablets returns focus to the visible menu control when the drawer closes.

2026-08-27 — Every round gets its own decision

The postseason now keeps the same inspect, plan, commit and resolve rhythm as the regular season: one controlled-team game advances at a time, and the plan you chose survives a save and return. Owner investment is grounded in available football-operations capital, obligations and runway instead of an unbounded cash pile. Cloud saves now distinguish corruption checks from optional passphrase authentication. On phones and tablets, the navigation control is larger, notch-safe and fully scrollable in both themes.

2026-08-23 — The Boardroom, and a face across the table

Running the club is no longer filed under Settings. The new Boardroom holds your owner, the facilities you build, your coaching staff and your franchise identity in one place, because deciding what to spend the owner's money on is a decision, not a preference. On draft day, rival clubs that call to buy your pick now arrive as a named general manager with known tendencies and a memory of every deal you have done together — including the ones they are still annoyed about. And there is now one place to learn the game instead of four. If you want to know how honest the simulation actually is, we wrote that down too: see the simulation page.

2026-08-22 — The owner's office stops being a cheat code

Training, rehab and analytics facilities used to be three boxes you could type any number into, for free, on your first turn. They are now capital: you break ground against the owner's cash, the price climbs steeply with each level, you can only build so much in a league year, and every wing you own charges upkeep forever. Ticket prices answer to a real market — charge far above what the league charges and the seats empty faster than the extra revenue arrives. And the other thirty-one clubs invest in their own buildings now, so a training edge is something you have to keep earning.

2026-08-19 — The league stops minting stars

Player development was quietly handing every club a bonus on top of the declared progression curve, and a decade in, the league was thick with elite players in a way real football never is. Progression is now measured against how rare elite talent actually is in real professional football — anchored to the real number of First-Team All-Pro and Pro Bowl places against a real active-roster population. A great player is rare again, which is what makes finding one matter.

2026-08-16 — Your decisions reach the field

Three of the calls you make every week turned out never to reach the simulation at all. The weekly tactical focus you set now genuinely changes how your team plays, and you can see the difference in the result. Contracts are priced by one consistent market across opening deals, free agency and rival bidding, so a fair offer looks fair everywhere. And the salary cap is a real constraint again rather than a number that quietly stopped biting.

2026-08-11 — Every command lands where it points

Ranked commands now take you to the exact player, pick or contract they name, on desktop and on a phone. Contract-year agents negotiate with their own persona and leverage instead of a generic script. Weekly predictions settle themselves as the season advances and tell you honestly whether you were right. And the first load of the game got materially faster.

2026-08-08 — See what other GMs are doing

Community Stats is here: an optional, anonymous look at how other players build teams, work the market, attack the draft and chase championships. It is off until you turn it on, it never receives your save, your names or your notes, and a trend stays hidden until enough players are represented for it to mean anything. Read exactly how it works on the methodology page.

2026-08-03 — The front office gets sharper

Season theses now demand real proof — a bad week can no longer certify your grand plan. Welcome Back reports only what actually happened in your last session, for the exact franchise you open. Your GM legacy screen shows every remaining path to the next tier with exact numbers.

2026-08-01 — The offseason became real

Contracts genuinely expire. Rival clubs fight to re-sign their own stars before the market opens, free agency resolves in three bidding waves that wait for your moves, the draft honors every traded pick, and compensatory picks are finally awarded. The full offseason is now a calendar you live through, not a screen you skip.

2026-07-31 — 31 rival front offices woke up

Rival GMs now send you trade offers worth reading, premium free agents weigh competing bids week by week, your owner's patience is a live meter with real ultimatums, and home-field advantage, bye-week rest, and a neutral-site championship all shape results.

2026-07-25 — Command the week

A decision-first weekly plan composer, a progressive Week Room with one clear next action, pre-game tactical briefs with honest post-game film reviews, and a persistent Priority Inbox that never loses a critical decision.

2026-07-02 — Make it yours

Full light/dark themes with five accent presets, situational play-calling and fourth-down brains, preseason predictions graded at season's end, and a narrative continuity engine that remembers your press-room history.

2026-07-01 — Franchise Architect

VaultSpark Football GM became Franchise Architect: Football — new name, new home at playfranchisearchitect.com, same league memory.