FIFA’s game library has been mostly delisted on all game storefronts.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, every FIFA title, from FIFA 14 to FIFA 23, has been removed from Xbox Store, PlayStation Store, mobile, and Steam. FIFA 22 and FIFA 23 are still playable to gamers who are subscribed to EA Play, but that is the extent of it.
Of course, this news really is not that surprising. EA chose not to renew at the end of their licensing deal with FIFA, the biggest league in football, and are moving forward with their own title, EA Sports FC.
In their big reveal for EA Sports FC 24, EA also revealed that they would be working with several football leagues from around the world. That would include what is now a major segment of women’s football leagues, introducing them to EA’s football games for the first time.
While not surprising, this would of course be a major historical moment for EA, sports games, and the industry in general. FIFA is one of the pillars that built EA, starting all the way back in 1993 with FIFA International Soccer. EA decided to double down on sports games following the success of their John Madden Football game.
EA recognized their most serious competition in this genre was UK studio Sensible Studio’s Sensible Soccer, but they sought to do more than simply compete. EA focused on bringing as much realism as they could to the genre by positioning the game with an isometric view, creating impressive sprite graphics of players before they could use CG.
FIFA International Soccer would release on both the Sega Genesis and Super NES. However, most of the other FIFA games of that generation were exclusive to the Genesis, as EA signed an exclusivity deal with Sega. While this sounds like humdrum business now, this is also a historic precedent that would define how EA produced games in the future. And other third party developers would angle for similar deals moving forward.
But if we move forward to today, most fans of association football games won’t exactly miss the old FIFA games. While they may miss playing with the FIFA license, EA actually produced those games in such a way that it would receive marginal updates with each release. EA also added deep monetization systems into FIFA, and those were also precedents for how games made money past the initial sale. Mobile gaming as we know it today probably won’t exist without FIFA.
FIFA 22 and FIFA 23 probably remain playable on EA Play so that gamers on that service do not feel they were cheated, out of not being able to play the game too quickly. But you can be sure EA will do everything they can to convince those players to move on with their newer games as much as possible.
EA Sports FC 24 is releasing on September 29, 2023, on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Android, Windows via Steam and EA Play, and in a the first time in a while, on the Nintendo Switch.
