The Beautiful Game - Book One news & patch notes

The Steam Summer Sale is here! Get 25% off the game during the Summer Sale running from today through to 9 July!

This also coincides with the men's World Cup, so now is the time to strike and get yourself a copy of Book One. It's almost like it was written in the stars...

We're pleased to announce the official release of The Beautiful Game - Book One!

This is a massive occasion for us and we hope it goes as well as possible. The game has been thoroughly tested and has great feedback, so fingers crossed it will go down well. We estimate it has c. 10-12 hours of play.

The expected proceeds will mainly go into the development of Book Two and Book Three, and we can't wait to keep telling the story.

Please do leave a positive review if you enjoyed the game.

We've heard back from Steam and The Beautiful Game - Book One is approved for release!

We will release on May 15, 2026.

We will be doing a series of Steam key giveaways in the run-up to the release, so watch out for announcements of fun contests on here, X, and our Discord server!

The Beautiful Game is not your typical visual novel. Someone once described it as Ted Lasso but with sex. We're not sure that's quite right, but we'll take the compliment!

What is true is that we sometimes include interesting real life issues in the story. One topic that won't feature in the game, but is nonetheless interesting is replica club kits, exclusivity, and pricing.

I'm sure it's not unique to football (aka soccer), but teams in the UK's Premier League are notorious for selling unbelievably expensive replica kit. Loyal fans keep buying the kits, even as their wallets suffer year-on-year. It's not a new issue, but back in 2024/25 a case went to court in the UK after a complaint by a retailer.

What was it all about? Newcastle United (sadly, the club I support) signed an exclusive supply agreement with a retailer, JD Sports. That meant fans could only buy Newcastle United kit from that retailer, the club's own store, and the brand's manufacturer. Sports Direct - a competitor to JD Sports - complained, arguing that Newcastle had abused a dominant position and that the agreement was anticompetitive, leading to higher replica kit prices. The case was settled before going to trial. But some interesting insights and evidence came to light. I'm going to dive into these below.

• Fans only want their own club's kit, so clubs do not compete with each other when selling kit. This means that clubs operate in their own mini-market, basically a little monopoly, and if the price of kit rises most fans will still buy it.

• Exclusive deals between club and retailer remove cheaper retailers from the picture. This means fewer discounts, less retail competition, and higher prices.

• When cheaper retailers are excluded from selling kit, prices tend to follow the club's preferred pricing and not the competitive prices you would otherwise see in an open market.

• Clubs and brands benefit from this setup because higher retail prices mean higher wholesale margins. This means they have little incentive to allow more retail competition.

• In the past there have been fines for price fixing in football kit, but clearly these haven't deterred exclusionary agreements. Here, exclusivity seems to be an indirect way of controlling retail prices, something that competition authorities are normally against.

The big question is, when will competition authorities start to do something about this? Unless there is a good deterrent, clubs will keep doing this and exploiting their loyal fans.

It's been a lot of work but we are finally here! Book One is complete, and we have submitted it for review. We should hear back from Steam in about a week, and fingers crossed they approve it. We have also updated the Demo to reflect the full build, and this is freely available to play. So, please head on over and check out the new content, music, SFX, UI, and writing!

We will do more announcements soon, with details of Book One and our plans for the rest of the game.