While EA has been working on its own football games in the EA Sports FC franchise, it looks like another company might be taking up the reins of the FIFA license for its own football games. Retailer MohPlay Inc has indicated that 2K has secured the FIFA license, and is currently working on a new football title, FIFA 2K25, slated for release this year.
The report was seemingly further corroborated by Insider Gaming’s Mike Straw, who took to social media platform X to say that an announcement could be coming soon, but that no one seems to be willing to go on the record with him about the game, so details are currently scarce.
It is worth noting that this is in no way an official confirmation, and neither 2K nor FIFA itself have made any announcements. If the rumours do turn out to be true, however, this will be the first real competition EA will have seen for its football games in quite some time, especially with Konami having taken what was once Pro Evolution Soccer into a very different direction in its new free-to-play eFootball form.
For context, the last football title released by EA under the FIFA title was FIFA 23. Since then, the company has been working on football games with its own branding, with EA Sports FC 24 being the first release under the series’ new name. Going by its traditional release cadence, EA is also expected to release EA Sports FC 25 this year.
EA and FIFA’s long-standing partnership came to an end after the latter demanded the former pay over $2.5 billion to extend the agreement between the two entities by another four years. EA decided to end the partnership instead, following which FIFA confirmed plans to partner with other developers and publishers for future officially licensed FIFA titles. In March last year, FIFA president Gianni Infantino said the company’s next game was in development.