RIP FIFA: EA trademarks EA Sports FC

Final 7 days EA declared, in that insouciant way only mega-companies can, that probably it experienced experienced more than enough of paying out FIFA, the soccer earth governing physique, in get to contact its own video games FIFA. “As we appear forward, we’re also discovering the thought of renaming our world wide EA Sports activities football games,” EA Sports Team general supervisor Cam Weber wrote in a blogpost. “This means we’re reviewing our naming rights arrangement with FIFA, which is individual from all our other official partnerships and licenses throughout the football entire world.”

Certain enough nowadays comes the news (thanks Polygon) that EA has filed new European trademarks for some thing known as EA Sports activities FC. These were submitted on Oct 1 with the UK’s Mental Home Business and the EU’s Mental Residence Office for “personal computer sport application”.

The FIFA model has normally been unique from the wide array of other licenses incorporated into the recreation, and past EA executives this sort of as Peter Moore have raised the position that EA has arguably performed extra for FIFA’s impression with the success of this sequence than FIFA has itself. It can be also of-a-piece with other moves becoming made by EA, this kind of as rebooting and renaming PGA Tour as EA Sports PGA Tour.

So it appears to be like FIFA 22 will be the very last of the sequence to ship beneath that name: potentially. And there are other good reasons to take into consideration a title adjust also: FIFA is massive, but this could also be a probability to go absent from locations of controversy this kind of as FUT and its player packs, which some contemplate the epitome of unethical monetisation. EA says children should not be paying out on them and is certainly toughing it out at the moment but, with several regulatory bodies using an ever-nearer look, most likely a fresh new start off may possibly aid see the producing on the wall.