EA Sports Responds to UFC 5 Roster Backlash, Detail Plans for New Fighters

EA Sports reveals the next few UFC 5 fighters coming to the game.

By Tanner Dedmon

UFC 5 is officially out now as of October 27th, and now that the game is available in full, players have a lot to say about the starting roster. Namely, players have a lot to say about the lack of fighters, especially those who may have been newcomers from the time that UFC 4 released to the release of the newer game. Electronic Arts has since responded to that feedback by laying out plans for some of the upcoming fighters that'll be added to the game over the next couple of months including Yan Xiaonan, Bryce Mitchell, and more.

To be fair to UFC 5, the game does have tons of fighters spread out across different weight classes. The issues players took with the game, however, were that there weren't really any new fighters to speak of outside of ones included in the pre-order bonuses for the game such as Muhammad Ali.

"Usually we criticize new editions of sports games for just being a roster update," one player said in response to the state of UFC 5's roster. "EA took it a step further by not even giving the roster update."

EA Sports Responds to UFC 5 Roster Backlash

Electronic Arts apparently heard those kinds of feedback pretty plainly since the game's release and have since issued a response admitting that it "did not meet your expectations" in terms of what the current roster offers. As a partial reason for the lacking roster, EA said that it opted to continue updating UFC 4's roster with new fighters while working on UFC 5 as opposed to leaving UFC 4 players without new content. That makes sense in theory, but the result was a UFC 5 roster that still doesn't have some of the biggest names and newcomers that players have been asking about for awhile now.

"When UFC 5 was in early development, we made the decision that we wanted to keep supporting UFC 4 players as we began to develop UFC 5," the developers said. "Rather than halt live service support for UFC 4, we've been updating the roster until July of this year with the goal of delivering fresh content to our community."

The good news is that new characters are indeed on the way, and what's more, we already know who some of those new characters will be. They'll be added via the Fight Week live-service system that introduces new fighters each month, but those additions unfortunately won't start right away in November. Instead, the first new characters will be added in December with more to follow in the months afterwards.

In December, EA will add Yan Xiaonan and Amir Albazi to UFC 5. Ian Machado Garry, Mike Malott and Charles Jourdain will follow them in January, and Bryce Mitchell, Maycee Barber and Joe Pyfer are coming in February. New Alter Ego fighters will also be added each month.

"We will provide more visibility to the community on which new roster fighters are coming to the game and when," EA said. "Stay tuned for more updates here.

0comments
Start the Conversation

of