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Electronic Arts is officially done partnering with FIFA on soccer titles. The developer and publisher will rebrand games to EA Sports FC in 2023.
Over the course of quite a few months now, Electronic Arts and FIFA have exposed a souring of their partnership on video games. Whether it’s that Electronic Arts doesn’t want to pay the high licensing cost or whether FIFA wants more out of the games, EA’s FIFA series has been in peril for quite a bit. Now, the ties have officially been broken. EA has announced it will no longer partner with FIFA on new soccer games and will be rebranding to EA Sports FC for its next game in 2023.
This news was announced by Electronic Arts in a press release on May 10, 2022. According to EA, it is officially done with the FIFA partnership, cutting ties with the FIFA organization on future soccer video games.
“Next year, EA Sports FC will become the future of football from EA Sports,” wrote EA Sports & Racing EVP and group GM Cam Weber. “Alongside our 300+ license partners across the sport, we’re ready to take global football experiences to new heights, on behalf of all football fans around the world.”
This writing has been on the wall for this move for quite some time. It was back in October 2021 that EA started to express doubts about continuing its partnership with FIFA, reviewing its license agreement with the worldwide soccer organization. EA’s CEO Andrew Wilson would go on to say that they felt FIFA was holding licensing for soccer video games hostage and that the FIFA brand was becoming an impediment to development of new games. FIFA has shot back with plans to develop a soccer video game franchise without EA, but EA has also promised that it will continue to offer a strong simulation with plenty of licensed teams and clubs in its future games.
Whatever’s going on with EA Sports FC, it sounds like Electronic Arts plans to have a new game ready by July 2023. As we await further reveals and details, stay tuned for new updates here at Shacknews.
TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.
TJ Denzer posted a new article, EA and FIFA cut ties, rebrands soccer games EA Sports FC
Lol the generic name curse of “city name FC” extends all the way to EA and their soccer games now huh.
The thing about EA is they always try and walk it in.
https://media0.giphy.com/media/qN7NZR3Q5R2mY/giphy.gif
i’m kinda curious if FIFA’s going to throw their weight behind a competitor now
Konami, clearly
Konami doesn’t make games and you can’t convince me otherwise.
Only if the competitor has a lot of money
Plus all it gets them is the FIFA name and the world cup- no players or teams.
yea.. i’m thinking they were playing hardball and lost. so now in leiu of getting $250m/year, they are getting $0/year.
they don’t seem the type of org to go ‘oh we lost, oh well’ – i wouldn’t be too surprised if they were happy with something relatively tiny simply to try to screw over their old ‘partner’ haha
<Epic Games> so we heard you want a developer for a new FIFA game, but get this, what if all the.players were rocket powered cars?