FIFA, Please Make Your Disaster Of A Video Game

thegamer.com:

After 28 long years, EA and FIFA’s partnership has ended. Instead of playing FIFA 24 next year, we’ll instead get EA Sports FC 24, which is just an all around garbage name. Still, a rose by any other name, FIFA (or whatever it gets called) is the easily best football sim on the market, and maybe the best sport sim full stop. That’s unlikely to change, especially as it’s keeping the FIFA licences - meaning it will still have the real teams, real leagues, and real players - it’s just losing the naming rights. However, there still could be a FIFA game in the near future, and it would be a beautiful disaster.

The FIFA naming rights belong to the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, or, as you might have guessed, FIFA. This governing body which oversees the sport has licensed out its name to EA since 1994, and for many people has become more synonymous with the football sim than the organisation itself. Clearly strapped for cash in these threadbare times for football, FIFA wanted $1 billion over the next four years from EA to keep the name, having previously charged $150 million a year.

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In truth, I wish there was a way for both corporations to lose, but this outcome means FIFA gets no money and EA has to use its monumentally stupid name that reeks of Washington Football Team, so I guess they both kind of did. I look forward to playing EA Commanders 25.

The obvious question is what changes for EA, but unfortunately for those who enjoy watching car crashes from a safe distance, I think the answer is ‘very little’. FIFA is just the name, and while FUT’s new name (is it cheeky enough to become ‘Football Ultimate Team’ to keep the acronym?) will be an adjustment, what’s really in a name anyway?

Thankfully