A video game lawyer has revealed exactly what Electronic Arts would have to do in order to make a new NCAA Football game happen, and it’s thrown a wrench into fans’ hopes for a comeback. The lawyer’s clarification follows the NCAA announcement that it would start the process of letting students profit from their own image, name and other likenesses, which many thought meant NCAA Football games could return.
The NCAA Football series ran from 1993, when it was known as Bill Walsh College Football, to 2013. The release of NCAA Football ‘14 marked the end of the series, since a 2014 lawsuit found legal issues with NCAA games, claiming they profited illegally from the athletes’ likenesses. There hasn’t been an official NCAA football video game since, leaving football fans mostly restricted to the NFL’s Madden series - which recently released its 33rd game, Madden NFL 20 - and quirky football indie games, like Mutant Football League.
While the news that the NCAA is beginning to walk back its rule against paying players seemed like great news for the franchise, it appears bringing back NCAA Football would be fairly complicated. Video game lawyer Stephen McArthur said in a statement (via TheGamer) that, if EA were to try to make an NCAA game, it would run into a big issue: It would need to get permission from every individual athlete to use their likeness, since there’s currently no union or other organization to manage this for everyone. After the NCAA’s initial announcement, hope for the NCAA Football series was further bolstered by EA CEO Andrew Wilson, who told Wall Street Journal Tech Live reporter Jason Gay the company would be eager to bring the series back if someone was able to solve for how to pay players. With McArthur’s statement in mind, Wilson’s caveat is more important than it first seemed.
There’s a big “if” between NCAA fans and the possibility of a new NCAA Football game. So, unless an NCAA players’ union forms to negotiate contracts like this, it’s unlikely the series will come back anytime soon. Fans in the surprisingly active NCAA Football series Reddit celebrated the initial news fervently, with threads like user ts23_‘s filled with comments proclaiming the series’ return. It seems there’s quite a few fans, then, who would be disappointed if EA and the NCAA didn’t eventually figure out a way to make it happen.
Even if it did work out, however, fans like user mothman26 worried about how EA would treat the reboot. EA’s long-running FIFA series has been plagued by predatory monetization mechanics for quite some time, and the FIFA 20 career mode was broken at launch and included issues that carried over from FIFA 19. If the stars align and NCAA Football somehow manages to come back, fans could potentially run into similar issues.
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Source: TheGamer
