FIFA seeks $1B+ (per 4 years) from EA for name usage

Such a good opportunity for EA to mount an Anti-FIFA corruption campaign in game. Mess with some trade rules. Images of Sep Blatter bathing in the rain of cash at the press conference. Force players to choose between FI-FI-FA legacy league and the new hotness.<p>FIFA are corrupt from top to bottom. EA have a direct channel to a huge slab of their market to tear the FIFA politicians with their snouts in the trough a new one.<p>Might actually make next years&#x27; game update a lot more interesting than changing the player lists. I&#x27;d like to be less cynical about the prospects of anyone actually cleaning up corruption anywhere right now. I really would. Do you prefer Ivanka or Hunter flavours of corruption? We can&#x27;t even vote that out so the Military Industrial Complex is pretty safe. No chance of health reform either. Nobody likes Ivanka or Hunter and there they go shovelling more money than you will in a decade just this month. &quot;Now do the $other_side who are worse!&quot;<p>edit: last para anti-corruption rant

Sales of games like this always amazed me. It seems like every year somebody tweaks a yaml config with the player details and hits build - voilà brand new game is out, time to shell out another $60.

You have to understand that EA makes more than $1.5bn annually with a steep upwards trajectory. They are achieving this with mostly predatory micro transactions. They also have now 4 generations of game engines running the Fifa 22 games. One for the switch, one for pc and old-gen consoles and one for the new gen. If you are playing on anything else than new gen consoles you are paying 60$ for an updated xml file and some art assets players are also loosing all the progress and money spent over the last year.<p>That said FIFA is at least as shady as EA so they can both burn to the ground.

You now have to paid FIFA, <i>every</i> single team in the European League, and Champion League for using their name, logos, colour of their shirt. etc etc. Extra money for having big name player faces for marketing on the box or graphics as well as their 3D face modelling appearing in their game.<p>How much of that $60 you are paying actually goes to the game and not some licensing?<p>I am not against licensing fees per se, but it is getting out of hand. You would expect they have more resources with all the success to continue to improve football &#x2F; soccer games. But no, I have so much more fun with Winning Eleven &#x2F; Pro Evolution Soccer in the late 90s and 00s than all the crap we have now.<p>It is actually a lot of the same with Remasters, something about the act of making games is lost.

Slightly off topic: Sensible World of Soccer 96&#x2F;97 and earlier ones had all real player names and those nice pixelated player pictures which quite accurately resembled players&#x27; real-life look.<p>Then (?) Sensible Soccer &#x27;98 came out and suddenly there were no real players names anymore, not sure about the pictures though.<p>Does anyone know if it was due to a copyright claim from FIFA?

All other points aside, it is truly astounding that the non-profit organisation FIFA requires billions of dollars just to license out their name to a video game.<p>If FIFA really is a non-profit, why is there a need for all this money?<p>Some context:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.huffingtonpost.co.uk&#x2F;2015&#x2F;05&#x2F;30&#x2F;fifa-profits-sepp-blatter-_n_7474808.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.huffingtonpost.co.uk&#x2F;2015&#x2F;05&#x2F;30&#x2F;fifa-profits-sep...</a><p>&gt;So where does this money go? Well last year [2014] Fifa paid out £26.1 million in salaries to its top 13 executives.<p>&gt;The organisation does not say how much it pays Sepp Blatter or other senior officials but &quot;compensation is in line with major international and Swiss companies&quot;.

FIFA wants a piece of the cake. A symptom of the game industry growing immensely during the last couple of years.<p>Another symptom is the Epic vs. Apple conflict. As the amounts of money made in the sector grow almost without bounds, so does the aggressiveness of the players.<p>Today‘s game industry is the 20th century‘s movie industry.

I don&#x27;t think EA would lapse the license. Too much Tencent going on around the block to risk it. This might be a negotiation maneuver.