FIFA 23 delisted ahead of EA Sports FC 24 release

thesixthaxis.com:

FIFA 23 and earlier games in the football series have all been removed from sale by EA, a few days ahead of the release of EA Sports FC 24, their rebranded sequel series.

Every game from FIFA 14 through to FIFA 23 is now no longer available to buy on digital storefronts across the PlayStation Store, Microsoft Store, Nintendo eShop, Steam, the Epic Games Store and EA’s own store on PC. However, there are still the vestigial digital limbs of these games, with some microtransactions available for FIFA Ultimate Team.

FIFA 22 and FIFA 23 are both still available via EA Play subscription, and it should be noted that anyone that owns FIFA games digitally is still able to play. They have simply been removed from sale.

This was first spotted by not-Twitter user MauroNL. We can’t find an official statement on the matter – the Steam page notes that “At the request of the publisher, EA SPORTS™ FIFA 23 is unlisted on the Steam store and will not appear in search.” – so it’s not entirely clear the specific reason for the game’s being pulled, but it’s clear that the end was coming.

The most likely reason for this is that EA’s agreement with FIFA for the last five years has got hard cut-off dates for their game distribution, albeit with a sunsetting period to cater for game subscriptions and post-sale microtransactions. There could also be clauses to prevent EA from selling a competing product at the same time as FIFA licensed games, forcing EA to remove the games from sale – we don’t know exactly when the games were delisted, so this could have occurred last week alongside FC 24’s early access launch.

EA announced in the middle of 2022 that they would be dropping the FIFA brand, having been unable to agree new terms for the license –