Early yesterday morning, Electronic Arts (hereinafter referred to as EA) issued an official announcement. The content of this announcement is very long, but aside from the nagging content and the picture cake of FIFA 23, the content that is really important and shocked all fans of "FIFA" series can be summarized in one sentence - in 2023, EA will terminate its cooperation with FIFA, and the "FIFA" series will be officially renamed EA Sports FC.
Source: Weibo @ easportsfifa-chn
Since the release of FIFA international football, the first generation work of "FIFA" in 1993, EA's "FIFA" series has gradually become the leader in the field of football virtual games, relying on its more outstanding gameplay in the field of virtual football games and the many available star players and teams brought by the authorization of FIFA and many leagues.
Previously, GfK, a British market research company, released a set of data, which counted the game IP with the highest historical revenue in the UK since 1995 (calculated by physical sales). In this data, "FIFA" series is the best-selling game series in British game history, and its total sales even exceed the giants of the game industry such as "call of duty" series, "Super Mario" series and "Grand Theft Auto" series.
Although the annual "FIFA" new year goods are always criticized by players for changing soup without dressing, the overall game experience is not much different except that the suffix number of the name has changed. But as long as the new work of "FIFA" is released, the feedback of players is as honest as ever - as long as the game is still called "FIFA", it will have to be popular.
To put it bluntly, the existence of "FIFA" series has been almost equal to the public's cognition of football games. Even for players who do not know football, they may not know the existence of FIFA, but they must know that there is a football game called "FIFA".
The name "EA Sports FC" is a bit awkward
Now, the fate between this series and this name will come to an end after the release of the new work a year later. The whole "FIFA" series will embark on a new path under the name of EA Sports FC. From the initial release of "FIFA", this historical turning point just falls in the 30th year of the birth of this series.
However, this has zero and whole, which meets the time point of many people's obsessive-compulsive disorder. Although it is full of commemorative significance, the separation of EA and FIFA can not be called "good gathering and good dispersion".
Although the "FIFA" series has brought considerable income to EA and FIFA for 30 years, they have worked closely for 30 years. Instead of cultivating enough consensus and tacit understanding during this period, they have more and more dissatisfaction and interest disputes.
As early as more than half a year ago, when FIFA's licensing agreement was about to expire, there had been media reports that EA was considering giving up cooperation with FIFA. In EA's own official press release, it has been quite straightforward that FIFA's licensing agreement is not necessary for their games. They are "exploring the possibility of renaming".
Official press release issued by EA on October 7, 2021
A few days after this press release was issued, some media found that EA had applied for the trademark of "EA Sports FC" to the UK Intellectual Property Office and the EU Intellectual Property Office.
Source: Weibo @ easports_ FIFA
If these are only unilateral measures of EA, the statement issued by FIFA a a few days later said that "more space is needed and all copyrights cannot be controlled by one group", which almost confirmed the termination of the cooperation between EA and FIFA.
These revelations about the termination of cooperation between EA and FIFA are quite interesting.
At that time, kelemei's "live football" series had just changed its name to "efootball 2022". As a result, due to unsatisfactory picture performance and gameplay, as well as endless bugs, it triggered a wave of bad comments. It quickly topped the steam bad comments list and became one of the few wonders of "bad comments like a wave", which can be described as being nailed to the stigma column of game history.
The ranking list of bad comments after data website steam250 is published in "efootball2022"
In the eyes of many players, the "live football" series has always taken "authenticity" as a differentiated characteristic, competing with "FIFA" in the field of football games. After Waterloo in "efootball 2022", many players believe that the field of football games has completely become the world of "FIFA", and EA can also take this opportunity to kick off FIFA and eat this big cake by itself.
In fact, although EA really wants to seek more profits, the high asking price of FIFA in licensing fees may be the reason why EA really wants to terminate its cooperation.
According to the previous report of the New York Times, "FIFA" series is the longest and most profitable cooperation project in the sports field. Since the birth of this series, it has made more than $20 billion in profits for EA. Correspondingly, EA has to pay $150 million in annual copyright fees for FIFA. This is already the most important part of all FIFA's business income.
Source: Weibo @ easportsfifa-chn
However, when the last license agreement between EA and FIFA was about to expire, EA wanted to finalize the next license agreement with FIFA, but FIFA offered a nearly doubled price - EA needed to pay more than $1 billion for the license of a world cup cycle (four years). If EA wants to sign a 10-year contract as usual, it must prepare at least $2.5 billion.
Even if the "FIFA" series makes more money, the price is unbearable for EA. Although before this, EA has been denounced by many fans as a "vampire with no lower limit for making money" because of the existence of UT mode, the price offered by FIFA still makes many players realize that "one mountain is higher than another".
Many players don't understand what FIFA's intention is. The long-term cooperative relationship between them and EA has made the "FIFA" series the first choice for football players all over the world, which has also brought huge income. At this time, setting so many obstacles to this cooperation is of no benefit to them.
But in fact, FIFA itself is not a tall image in the hearts of football fans. Although this organization is known as a "non-profit organization", because it holds the copyright of the world cup, it is essentially a monopoly organization that makes billions of dollars a year.
In order to expand profits, FIFA has a considerable "black history". The high-profile bribery case in 2015 made many officials in this organization investigated and arrested by the FBI. After that, the new chairman, ivantino, also took many jaw dropping measures in this regard. For example, in 2017, the news that "the world cup will be expanded to 48 teams" caused an uproar in the football world.
Before the news that EA broke up with FIFA last September, FIFA had another "operation" - they submitted a proposal to change the world cup to Biennial. Although in the proposal, FIFA has elaborated a considerable number of "ambitious" ideas, many people believe that this is only a new way for FIFA to expand its profits. As mentioned earlier, the world cup is the most valuable IP in the hands of FIFA. Making this IP appear with a higher frequency will undoubtedly create greater value in business.
In some media reports, asking EA for more authorization fees is also useful to support the possibility of FIFA president ivantino's idea of restructuring the world cup.
But for EA, they don't want to pay for this idea and the profitability of FIFA. In the final analysis, in the year without the world cup, what FIFA's authorization brings to the "FIFA" series is just a four letter title. In addition, instead of giving much help, FIFA has provided many obstacles.
In the New York Times' disclosure of the contract renewal dispute between EA and FIFA, it was mentioned that in addition to the cost, FIFA's interference in EA's game production is also the main difference between the two sides. FIFA only wants EA to use their authorization in the most conservative way, and prefers to only open player parameters and other authorization for EA.
However, EA hopes to expand the mode of play in the game and the form of expression of football matches, and obtain the authorization of FIFA, including highlights, Championships and digital goods, so as to create a complete football game ecology.
Source: Weibo @ easports_ FIFA
Although EA did not respond to these revelations by external media, earlier this year, foreign media VGC disclosed the contents of an internal meeting of EA in November last year, further confirming the statement that FIFA prevented Ea from producing richer games.
Compared with paying high copyright fees, only one name and many obstacles will be exchanged, and the cooperation with FIFA will be completely terminated. For "FIFA", what is lost is only a name and its related logo, as well as the right to adapt the world cup once every four years.
These have almost no impact on the game content of "FIFA".
Last October, EA officially renewed its contract with FIFPro, the International Federation of professional football players, which ensures that even if they terminate their contract with FIFA, they can continue to use the portraits and names of more than 19000 players in the game.
EA's deep cultivation in the field of football in recent 30 years has enabled them to obtain more than 300 licensing agreements, which are all independent of their agreements with FIFA, giving them the right to use more than 700 teams, 100 stadiums and more than 30 leagues. The termination of the contract with FIFA will make EA lose the world cup, but they still have the right to adapt a large number of influential football leagues. Among these leagues, such as the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A, EA even got the exclusive authorization.
Therefore, even if "FIFA" loses "FIFA", the game series still provides the top game experience in this field, and the game content that players can experience is still "the same excellent experience, mode, league, championship, club and players". Even, because of the lack of a huge licensing fee, they can have more leeway to sign more and more complete teams, players and leagues, and experience more interesting game modes. There is a real lack of copyright. You can learn from the "live" next door to insert a USB flash disk. For players who have long been used to the mountains of copyright, this is not a big deal.
It can be said that from the perspective of EA, players who come for "the most fun football game" will not give up their support for their game series just because of the change of a name.
But interestingly, FIFA doesn't think so. FIFA president ivantino said in very tough terms after the EA official announced the change of name, "only authentic real games with FIFA titles are most suitable for players and fans." FIFA, after terminating its cooperation with EA, will also seek a new third-party studio to develop new "FIFA" football games including "FIFA 24" and compete directly with "EA Sports FC".
This "orthodoxy" theory has a flavor of "JDB and Wang Laoji"
This "orthodox" dispute has drawn a somewhat comic end to these grievances between EA and FIFA.
Ideally, football game players certainly want to play a football game full of creativity and playability, as well as rich and complete authorization.
But the reality is that "FIFA", which squeezes toothpaste every year, squeezes itself out because of FIFA's sky high licensing fee.
It is no exaggeration to say that football games have become the world of "FIFA" series since the disaster of "efootball 2022" brought by keleme last year. However, this more influential series can not escape the fate of renaming.
Although EA has repeatedly stressed that after losing the authorization of FIFA, the new EA Sports FC will still be the best football game. But to be fair, the influence of the world cup and the name "FIFA" has already brought unspeakable influence under the continuous overweight over the past few decades. If "FIFA" loses "FIFA", whether it will embark on the road of "efootball 2022" depends on how to deal with it after EA.
Of course, if you really go to the world line below, you'll have fun to watch.
