Seven-Year-Old FIFA 16 Just Got Taken Offline For Maintenance

thegamer.com:

EA and FIFA may not be on the best terms since the two organisations split. Following the release of the upcoming FIFA 23, EA's football games will be known as EA Sports FC. FIFA president Gianni Infantino didn't seem best pleased with the announcement, and rattled off a statement with the churlish sounding, "I can assure you that the only authentic, real game that has the FIFA name will be the best one available for gamers and football fans".

EA for its part continues to support its football games and today announced that it has a scheduled maintenance for May 26 at 6am to 10am UTC. "During this time, you may be disconnected or unable to access online services and modes, including FUT. Match creation will be disabled 30min prior to the maintenance", the service announcement read. So far so dull. But what was surprising was how far back the maintenance is running.

Related: Haaland's Transfer Means Playing As Man City In FIFA 23 Is Cheating

The titles impacted are FIFA 22 all the way back to FIFA 16. While EA has been lampooned for tweaking its FIFA games every year to sell a new title, at least the games giant is still supporting many of them. FIFA 16 dates to September 2015, making it an almost seven-year-old game, which in video games is an age.

FIFA 16 launched on the PS3 and Xbox 360, PS4 and Xbox One, and made its way to Windows for PC as well as iOS and Android. It was notable for including Lionel Messi on the cover, then of Barcelona, and was developed by EA Canada. It also stands out as the first FIFA game to include female players.

To get an idea of just how far back FIFA 16 is, some reviewers at the time were debating if FIFA 16 was good enough to challenge its great rival, Konami's PES 2016. Of course,