EA's FIFA Series Delisted On All Digital Storefronts Including Switch eShop

This change will only make the EA franchise even more mercenary. I feel sorry for anyone who buys or will buy something like this every year and will be lured in by the sea of microtransactions now rated on all platforms. 😐

The FC is only ok in comparison to FIFA's trashy legacy editions, so this is fine by me. Though if you're gonna buy an FC game, either go for this one only and don't buy any after, or wait a year to see if improvements happen

So sad that we lost so many FiiFiFoFum games.

Wait ... are you saying that because EA lost the rights to sell FIFA games, EA is no longer selling FIFA games?

Wow. Is THAT what it means to lose the rights to sell something? That you have to stop selling it? I honestly would never have thought that.

Did they announce this was happening? Welp I will snag a copy soon as I need the women’s world cup updates. But I do want the new game as Mia Hamm has been confirmed.

as FC 24 apparently has all the names, I'm confused as to what the FIFA license actually brought.

People crap on EA but they look like saints compared to FIFA themselves. Genuinely understand why they’ve cut ties.

@Uncle_Franklin You would be surprised of how much just the name is worth.

@Tyranexx Perfect reaction

@Uncle_Franklin

They could call the game FIFA
They could have a "World Cup"
They could use player names, stadiums and uniforms without having to negotiate with the individual leagues.

It also included a lot of restrictions for EA around content creation and E-sports.

When FIFA upped the price to A BILLION DOLLARS pre renewal, it became cost effective to simple approach the induvial clubs and license everything at that level.

So honestly ... you're not confused, you actually have it correct. Losing the FiFA license means basically nothing.

Thank you for cleaning your filth from the eShop and Steam EA. Now do the same for Madden.

Whatever. I'll take any Mario Strikers game over any EA soccer title any day.

I did not realize that the FIFA-EA split was going to be THAT severe. Well, I suppose it's honestly a good thing. A rare game doesn't necessarily mean it's a good game, and the soon-to-be-rare games they removed are certainly not great games.

But how will I play Fifa 15 now! 🤣

Good example of addition by subtraction.

The name game is riding high on the Switch eShop on preorders alone, impressive.

Sales charts are sure going to be interesting to watch the next few weeks

"As highlighted on social media, every FIFA game from 14 to 23 can no longer be purchased."

Besides the obvious fact that them losing the FIFA license means they can no longer legally sell games using the FIFA branding, didn't they already do this for older FIFA games shortly after the latest release came out?

I don't think you could buy any FIFA game before '23 on digital storefronts before this. Maaaaybe '22.

Another reason digital is so unsafe

@Baler

How so? This is no way impacts your ability to download the games if you own them or play the games forever if you already have them installed. "Delisted" games are simply not available for sale, they are not "gone" from the digital service.

It's also important to note the FIFA deal already included a "single run" clause, meaning no new physically copies could be made after the first run. You can still buy them used, and maybe you can find an unsold copy, but these games were available to buy first hand as digital media for years longer then they were officially sold physically.

This "digital apocalypse", where you loss your right to play games you bought digitally? It's just not happening. Let's look at the oldest digital marketplace for 3rd party games. You can still download Xbox 360 games you bought in 2005 and you'll still be able to download them after the service shuts down in 2024. But by 2023, statistically, around 5% of DVDs from 2005 will naturally be unreadable just based on the limitations of the tech.

So AT BEST 95% of physicals Xbox games from 2005 are playable. Add in lost, stolen, and anything else that can happen to physical media, that number is likely much lower.

But 100% of games bought digitally are playable today.

You have every right to prefer physical media, but maybe drop the fear mongering? Both media have advantages and disadvantages.

@HeadPirate Yeah, but those 5% unplayable physical games from 2005 are due to A: not taking care of your discs, or B: environmental issues such as being stored in a place with to much humidity. Virtually all 100% of the games aside from one's with factory defects will still work today as long as conditions A & B aren't met.

@LilyGoMEOW

Incorrect. 5% is the theoretical upper limit of perfect storage in lab conditions.

Optical storage simply stops working after time, regardless of how you treat it. The half life varies based on manufacturing quality, but it's somewhere between 50 years and 90 years for most disks (meaning, in perfect conditionals, 50% of all optical media will be be unreadable after that time). The theatrical limit of half-life is around 120 years, so perfectly manufactured disk should last a good while.

In "real" conditions, the number is much higher, and as I stated, you would also have to account for disks that are destroyed. Just this year we are looking at 50,000 home lost to wildfires, as an example. I personally lost part of my disk collection to a flood. That possibility is a negative of choosing physical that isn't there if you choose digital.

I mean, again, buy whatever media you want. I absolutely do not care. There are usage cases, like if you have a lot of friends you meet up to physically play games with, or you travel and often play your games where you are completely offline, where physical is likely the best choice.

But don't deny the reality of the situation or oversell one over the other. I didn't even get into how the very thing people think is a digital only problem, the publisher making it so you can't play the copy you paid for, is just as possible with physical games.

In the TOS you agreed with for every game and all consoles, you agree to allow them to update the console to lock out games on an individual basis, meaning you could put your disk in and the console will simple say "you can't paly this. Sorry". This has happened for an extremely small but non-zero number of titles. Remember, you don't OWN the software on your physicals disks. You simple have the right to use it under a revocable personal use license. And the publisher can pull a Danny Glover whenever they fell like it, physical or digital.

Now you can argue that you just wont update your console or play it on a emulator and that will solve the problem, and you're right. But playing that physical copy is now piracy as your license to play the software has expired. So If you're willing to break TOS and play copies of games illegibly... just burn some DVDs of your digital copies and have the best of both worlds!

truly the burning of alexandria all over again 😔✊

@HeadPirate hardly fear mongering. It’s just a fact that the digital world isn’t secure

@Baler

How so?

Can you give me some examples? And please make sure to read post 24 first.

@HeadPirate Sony has just been hacked. God only knows who has your information. Maybe they’ll shut down psn. Then what?!

@Baler

So ... yeah, that's fear mongering.

There are reasonable risks to every action we take in life. When you go and buy physical media from the store, you could get robbed. You credit card and personally information could be stolen at point of sale, a thing that happens thousands of times more frequently then anyone having credit card information stolen online.

You can lose physicals media. It can be stolen. Physical media has a shelf life. Read post 24 like I said if you actually are interested in informing your opinion and making better decisions.

Both have risks. Both risks are acceptable. But responding to a post about a mass shooting at a BestBuy with something like "YET ANOTHER REASON BUYING DISKS IS DANGROUS", while not completely inaccurate, is still just needless fear mongering.

Bottom lien is that as of writing, effectively 100% of all digital games are still playable. No were near 100% of all games bought on disk are still playable.

@JohnnyMind

That's correct. At any given point, the network you download from could decide to stop letting you do that. That's something you agree to when you buy a digital game.

But the point I always try to make beside that is that at any point, the people currently letting you run the software they own that is on the physically disk you have can also stop letting you do that at any time. The disk is meaningless. It's a storage media for software you do not own and only have a license to use, and that license can be revoked at any time. All consoles as well as Windows and MacOS support the ability to lock out software when the license has expired. While it's rare, this happens. And remember when Sony put out that console where you could play all your digital games for free, but if you bought any of them physically you had to pay Sony more money to play the games you already "owned"? Good times!

So physical and digital media both share this risk. I'm not posting this to try and prove anyone's preference is better or worse, I clearly do not care, but instead in an attempt to inform the people who think they are "safe" because they own disks that .... not so much. And also that if they have a usage care that would benefit from digital media but are hesitant, the risks they perceive are perhaps a bit overblown.

Unfortunately there is a lot of tribalism at work here, so instead of seeing how the very fear motivating them not to buy digital is still part of physical media, most people generally just end up blindly defending their chosen media and ignore any of the points I make.

Such is the thankless life of the Head Pirate!

@HeadPirate bloody pirates

Well now for the physical copies for cheap with the sports stickers that struggle to come off.

Will the business models change in EA's new rebranded games who knows. Better games? Who knows. Will they save more money? Probably as the licenses are not cheap.

Not surprised the licensing was going to end/has, up to the physical/whatever updates available/having them on their systems.

No idea how these types of sports games are I have no interest in them only arcade ones/racing (arcade, sim, whatever) so however they are handled is what it is for updates/on the cart or not.

I deal with it with racing game delistings and just get the physical cheap years later (as I'm picky about how career modes are anyway as I never see people show the menus/modes off well (some do, some don't, a longplay sure, a review not always, 10 min gameplay footage not always either) sometimes I have to buy the games or emu them/read wiki pages to tell sometimes as footage always shows the races, not the parts I actually want to see to know what the game is actually about), besides just knowing how they feel to play of course, cars/tracks are whatever at this point to me.