Enlarge / Ars Technica’s MS Paint interpretation of what appears to be a finalized divorce between EA Sports and FIFA. (credit: EA Sports / Sam Machkovech)
Hidden amidst the usual “coming this fall” slate of video game announcements is one big change: the extrication of “FIFA” from all future EA Sports products.
On Thursday, Giant Bomb reporter and host Jeff Grubb followed up on an October 2021 report about the trademarked term “EA Sports Football Club,” possibly shortened to “EA Sports FC.” Grubb wondered exactly what the EAFC might refer to. EA Sports games come packed with a variety of single-player and online modes that range from cinematic story sequences to card-collecting, microtransaction-fueled frenzies, so the trademark could have referred to any kind of in-game mode—or the term could have been snapped up for non-public-facing reasons.
Around the same time, EA Sports stoked questions on the topic by publicly suggesting on its official blog that the game maker may “rename our global EA Sports [soccer] games,” all while retaining its licensing arrangements with various soccer leagues and clubs. This public suggestion could have been done for any number of reasons—perhaps to put pressure on FIFA itself to relent in aggressive, high-dollar licensing requests, lest EA Sports take both its literal and figurative ball and go home. Privately, EA executives told staffers that its arrangement with FIFA was far from fruitful, in terms of holding back possible development and design directions for future games.
