Hey guys, good game developer here with a new patch to fix a patch that was supposed to fix the save issue. In short, the game is storing a ton of data and it looks like the easy way to deal with the data is not going to fly. To fix the issue temporarily, when you save the game it will clear the player stats from box scores. This is the area that was taking up a massive portion of the file size. Note: this doesn't effect player's season stats. I just simulated 3 full seasons and the save file was 2 mb compressed. In comparison, the save file was previously failing at around 40mb compressed.
Long story for transparency: I never realized there was a save file size issue because when I test the game in the editor the file sizes were miniscule and I could simulate several seasons and never see a hitch. For some reason I still don't understand or have an answer for, when the game is packaged for steam the save files bloat to these unrealistic sizes. While I should've detected this issue sooner, I did not. The first fix was to compress the files. This was nice because the files were about a 1/10th the size and would run into the issue, in theory, around season 40+. However, in my stupidity the compression only occurs after the savefile is passed to the memory buffer which does nothing to bypass the crash. So my next step is to redo how the data is stored. I've started the first steps to moving the data over to SQLite which is a local database system that is made to handle insane amount of data (far beyond what this game handles) with great speed and efficiency. I don't have an exact timeframe for this, but I'm hopeful it may only take a week. Thank you all for your patience and I'm truly embarrased by this issue.
Fixed controller losing focus when selecting special teams on defense in the playcall menu.
Fixed an issue with the kicking arrow staying permanently.
Fixed issue with a few cards and contract signings not getting immediate "focus" that caused button presses not to register.
Lowered Star Player desired contract values by 5%.
Raised Quarterback, Kicker, and Punter strength deterioration after age 30.
Fixed the wrong coaches being used when playing exhibition games.
The contract value on the free agency sidebar will no longer show several decimal points.
Fixed some button sizings in the off-season.