The day has come!

Esports Team Manager is out in the world and is officially yours to play. This game has been a labor of love, this team is small but mighty, and we've been working so hard for the last couple of years to make this game be what it is.

ETM was born from yaers of experience within the esports industry, a passion for MOBAs, and a shared vision to create the most realistic esports team management simulator possible. We've been lucky enough to collaborate with some incredible esports teams, creators, and esports industry GOATS who have kindly agreed to be part of our game and bring this all to life.

On behalf of myself and the entire team, thank you. Thank you for all of your support for this game, for following and engaging with us on socials and in the Discord, for trying out our demo and adding our game to your wishlists. It's been so appreciated. We hope you all enjoy the full version of the game, and we wish you the best of luck out there in Aurebella.

Lotta love, thank you.

- The Brain Trust team

We dropped our demo! 

October marked a big milestone for us at Esports Team Manager, we released our first demo as part of Steam Next Fest! It was so exciting for us to see you all playing the game and it was a great learning experience for us too. It’s amazing to see the game out in the world and you guys having a great time playing it! Your feedback has been so valuable, we really appreciate everyone who took the time to fill in our survey and to share their thoughts in our discord server or on socials. 

Next Steps

So what’s next post-demo? We’re currently working on implementing your feedback into the game and tackling any bugs that may have popped up during the demo. As a management sim, it’s really important to have the saving and loading features on lock so we can preserve your saves, stories and season. A major aspect we received a lot of feedback on is the in-game matches, this is something we’ll be fine-tuning so that the outcome of matches will be clearer overall. We also want to make it easier to see how your chosen team is doing on the whole. One extra feature we’ve been wanting to add into the game is ‘Mastery’. Mastery will influence which champs certain players are better or worse at, which will affect in-game outcomes and your drafting methods. From now until December, we’re full steam ahead in heavy development to perfect the game for release! 

Release

Our release date is set for December 8th, which will coincide with Steam’s Sports Fest running from 8th December to 15th December, and also Steam’s winter sale! So you’ll be able to pick up Esports Team Manager on sale all throughout December! We’ll be sharing more information on pricing later on closer to release, not long to wait now!

That’s about all we’ve got for you this month - short but sweet! Thank you again for your continued support, wishlisting the game, playing the demo and providing feedback - it means a lot to us! :) 

The big headline of this month’s development update is that the ‘Esports Team Manager’ demo will be out and ready to play on October 13th as part of Steam Next Fest! The development team has been hard at work, spending this month polishing up our demo build for the Next Fest. This will be the first time the game is playable outside of our team and the first chance to experience our unique champs, real teams & MOBA inspired drafting system. The demo will feature at least a dozen real teams, with more to be included in the full version. We’re continuing to adjust both champs and player ratings all the time, with little touches and hot fixes being updated throughout the demo build and beyond.

We can’t wait for you to get your hands on our game and we want to hear your feedback!

The draft system

One aspect of the game we’re really excited for you to try out is the drafting system for our in-game game. The drafting system is modelled after those in real-life MOBA games, for us realism and authentic feel is key. We want drafting in ETM to take you behind the scenes and feel like your favourite MOBA games. We’re talking pick rates, ban rates, stats, and analytics. As an avid MOBA gamer, Paul loves a good nuanced drafting system and strived to capture that feeling within the game. 

Be a part of the game!

Content creators, casters, coaches, journalists, players & teams - If you’re part of the esports community and interested in being a part of the game, there’s still time! Reach out to the team via our socials or join our discord and we can discuss bringing you in! Shout out to the individuals and teams who are already a part of the game, we appreciate you all! 

Release date announcement coming soon 

It’s one milestone after the other for the game, as we’ll be announcing the release date for Esports Team Manager very soon! We’re on track and excited to bring you the game before the end of this year! 

That about wraps it up for this month’s update, make sure to keep up with us on socials to get more regular updates about Esports Team Manager and we’ll see you in Steam Next Fest! :) 

Lotta love,

The Dev, Paul

Hey all!

Firstly, apologies for the silence over the last few months. The team have been heads down developing and ensuring we make the best game possible (it's coming along amazingly!!).

This month we did our first dev update in a video format 🥳, and you can expect these monthly moving forward. Check out the video above for the rundown or see the summary below:

First look at our draft system

Fitted out with 80+ champions we've handcrafted. We've also made huge improvements to this already in the past three weeks.

Details about our first public demo

Right now, we've only demoed internally with a select focus group, but we're excited to announce we'll be part of Steam's Next Fest event from October 13th to October 20th, so mark your calendars as that'll be the first time you get to dive into our demo.

How you can be part of Esports Team Manager

Are you a MOBA player, coach, analyst, creator, streamer, or own a team invested in a relevant title? Get in touch with us on our relevant social channels or Discord linked below - we'd love to hear from you!

X/Twitter: https://x.com/esportstmgame/status/1962950740466385303

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/esportsteammanager

Discord: https://discord.gg/QkMEu8ED4e

That's it for our August dev update - see you next month as we continue to ramp up for a Q4 launch.

-Nathan, Co-Founder & CMO

Happy summer vibes, everyone! It's almost 100F where I'm based (or 40ish C roughly if that applies to you), so we're in the thick of summer!

Sharing an announcement to let everyone know the team is alive and well, just hard at work through what we're happy to call a more quiet and settled in part of development, we're blessed and lucky you're on this journey with us.

A bit of a re-introduction, our goal is to be a super realistic esports team manager game with real teams. We're doing a ton on both fronts:

The Game: development continues smoothly! As a one-person dev team with supporting artists and team, work continues as you'd expect on a smaller bootstrapped team. I remain fully confident though for our Q4 release, and we're so excited to share more about that soon. I expect we'll be announcing a release date sometime in August or so? Please don't hold me to it but for Q4 we'll have to know around then!

The Teams: right now we have roughly EIGHT teams signed on to be in the game. These are real teams from semi-pro regional League of Legends leagues, and we're so honored to move forward with their partnerships. While these remain unofficial as we sort Legalese and continue to meet with teams to cover scope more broadly, we've got some crazy fun announcement forthcoming.

Our larger social media pushes will be starting within the next month or two, so hang tight, you're in for a great ride, and we're so excited you're here. If you haven't already, please give the game a wishlist and a follow on Steam, and let your friends know we're here too. And keep enjoying that summer weather as much as you can, go touch grass now so you can be playing this through the holidays comfortably inside!

- Paul, Founder and Lead Dev

1. NO MICROTRANSACTIONS. Plain, simple, and never. The only "extra" will likely be a donation tier for people who want to donate to the team and have their name added into the game, but I wouldn't consider that a microtransaction. We're keeping these at arms length.
   
2. Cheaper than most skins in most games. That's right. We're coming into Early Access at $20, with a sale price of $16 (all based on USD).
   
3. Real teams. We've already had 4 teams agree to be in the game, and we're looking to expand to about 20 by the time the fall rolls around. While I can't guarantee or predict that aspect, I remain confident we'll have at minimum a nice plethora of real AND thoughtfully constructed fictitious teams.