FIFA will make video games with new partners after getting dumped by EA
polygon.comSome people might find it tough to put themselves back out there immediately after the breakup of a three-decade relationship. Not FIFA, the global governing body of soccer, which announced Tuesday an ambitious plan to produce multiple FIFA-branded video games with various developers and publishers — mere hours after its erstwhile licensing partner, Electronic Arts, announced that it was ending its relationship with FIFA.
Until now, FIFA had maintained an exclusive licensing agreement with EA for both simulation and nonsimulation titles, which meant that nobody but EA could make soccer video games with the FIFA name and logos. That deal was set to expire this year, but the parties have signed a “short-term extension,” according to FIFA, under which FIFA 23 will be the last EA game to carry FIFA branding. EA’s soccer franchise, which debuted in 1993 with FIFA International Soccer on Sega Genesis, will be retitled EA Sports FC as of July 2023.
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When it is released this fall, FIFA 23 will — for the first time — not be the only FIFA-branded soccer video game on the market, although it will be the only simulation soccer game on the market. The aforementioned extension between FIFA and EA “grants rights for the simulation football category only, freeing up broader gaming rights for FIFA and different gaming publishers to launch new games and more deeply immersive experiences for fans and football stakeholders,” said FIFA.
Accordingly, FIFA announced Tuesday that “a number of new non-simulation games are already under production” for release this fall, although it did not name any of the developers or publishers involved. The first of these titles will be focused on the 2022 World Cup, which will take place in Qatar
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