FIFA Games Vanish from Digital Stores Ahead of EA Sports FC 24 Release

FIFA games have apparently been pulled from digital stores this week.

By Tanner Dedmon

EA Sports FC 24 is out now in early access, but it's full release won't happen until later this week on October 29th. Ahead of that launch, Electronic Arts has apparently decided to clean up its digital listings with past FIFA games disappearing from online stores this week. Searching for those games yields no results at this time when looking through platform stores like Steam, the PlayStation Store, and Xbox Store, and in at least some cases, looking for a FIFA game will direct you to the new EA Sports FC 24 as the primary result instead.

You can try looking for the FIFA games in the storefronts above, but don't expect many helpful results. Looking for the games in the PlayStation Store, for example, yields results for tons of different FIFA Points as well as some results for EA Sports FC 24, but not the FIFA games themselves. Even if you look on the PlayStation site itself, you'll find links for the games, but selecting any of those redirects you to FC 24 instead. Looking in Steam yields similar results with the new soccer game from EA leading the list of the next best options other than the FIFA games.

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Why Are EA's FIFA Games Gone?

So, where have all the FIFA games gone? EA hasn't made any formal announcement this week about the games being removed, but looking back at its history with FIFA and the new name that FC 24 boasts, it's not difficult to piece together why this might've happened.

Longtime partners for the FIFA games, EA and FIFA officially split early last year. While specifics haven't been discussed much publicly, it's been said that FIFA was asking EA for more money for the license than the publisher found agreeable. EA said it'd be continuing its trend of releasing the annual soccer games under the new EA Sports FC brand while FIFA said it'd be releasing its own games, too, and that the FIFA experience would be "the only authentic, real game that has the FIFA name."

With that partnership done, the license for the FIFA brand in those games was set to expire at some point, too. We don't know exactly when the FIFA license would've fizzled out, but whether it was done this week or not, this week is when EA decided to (or had to) removed the games from sale.

How to Play Older FIFA Games

EA Sports FC 24 should feel very much like the older FIFA games anyway since the core experience remains the same, but what if you wanted to play one of the older games now that they've been removed? Those who have the older games downloaded already will of course still be able to play them, and even if you uninstall them, they should still show up in the "owned" section of whatever platform you're using, so if you've got them, they're yours to keep. For those who didn't buy the older games, however, it looks like your best option now is to buy them physically unless you want to risk buying a key from a third-party site.

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Subscription services are another way to go for some of the more recent FIFA games. FIFA 22, for example, still shows up in the Xbox Game Pass library via EA Play, and it's been said that FIFA 23 is still playable via the EA Play app as well.

EA Sports FC 24 is out now in early access and with a full release planned for September 29th.

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