EA removing Russian national teams from FIFA, NHL 22
Brendan Sinclair
Managing Editor
Wednesday 2nd March 2022
Electronic Arts is pulling Russian elements from a number of its games in the wake of the country's invasion of Ukraine.
EA Sports' official FIFA Twitter account today announced that it "has initiated processes" to remove the Russian National Team and Russian football clubs from its line of FIFA titles.
At the same time, the EA Sports NHL account said it would be removing Russian and Belarusian national and club teams from NHL 22 over the coming weeks after the International Ice Hockey Federation suspended them from its competitions.
"EA Sports stands in solidarity with the Ukrainian people and like so many voices across the world of football, calls for peace and an end to the invasion of Ukraine," the company said on the FIFA account.
It added that it is "actively evaluating related changes to other areas of our games."
While the publisher did not specify what those might be, GamesIndustry.biz understands that Russian tracks will be removed from the company's F1 games.
There is also a question about what the company will do about today's news that Russian F1 drivers have been banned from competing in UK.
An EA representative did not immediately return a request for comment.
EA was one of a number of companies Ukrainian deputy prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov called on to close their Russian offices earlier today.
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