EA Sports FC 25 early access begins, full release on September 27

[Daniel Sims]

Bottom line: EA is gearing up to release its second association football sim since parting ways with FIFA and relinquishing the World Cup license in 2022. The new EA FC franchise doesn't seem to be hindered by the loss, and market conditions will likely prevent any serious competitors from emerging in the near future.

EA Sports FC 25 is now available for customers who pre-ordered the Ultimate Edition for $100, while the standard edition will launch on September 27 for $70.

The sequel to EA's first post-FIFA football game introduces several gameplay enhancements and new modes. A revamped AI system aims to deliver more realistic matches, and a new rush mode enables co-op play in 5v5 games.

Moreover, EA Sports FC 25 introduces the first fully-featured career modes for female players, allowing users to manage a player or team in one of five top-ranked women's leagues. This addition builds on EA's continued effort to integrate female players, which began with last year's title.

Later this year, Live Strat Points will enable players to link their careers with real-world matches during the 2024/2025 season.

The system requirements remain modest, unchanged from the last two entries. EA recommends 12 GB of RAM and either an AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT or Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti. The game requires 100 GB of storage space.

Strangely, enough early-access players on Steam have reported issues with controller support to drag the game's Steam review rating down to "Mixed." This prompted EA to release a workaround guide while the company investigates the issue.

Although EA's notice suggests the problem primarily affects PlayStation 5 DualSense controllers, many players report being unable to use any controller. After all, the game is still in early access (though it's a $100 early access game).

Despite EA's split from FIFA two years ago and the latter's pledge to create a better football game, no such competitor seems to be on the horizon.

Earlier this year, rumors circulated that 2K Games had secured a deal to develop FIFA 2K25. However, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick denied these reports, explaining that licensing for association football is more complex than for American football, basketball, or baseball.

Zelnick pointed out that, while games like Madden, NBA 2K, and MLB: The Show only need agreements with one league, international football consists of many regional leagues. Moreover, the FIFA license alone doesn't grant access to those leagues, many of which have already signed deals with EA for their FC series.

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EA Sports FC 25 early access begins, full release on September 27

 

[Alfonso Maruccia]

Never understood the appeal of this stuff. Especially EA stuff.

Well, I stopped playing soccer games at the arcades anyway, and I only watch Italy's international matches every four years :-D

 

[emmzo]

Love the first picture. Woman player against man and she`s in control, protecting the ball. That`s as real as you`d get from this type of game. But besides the woke garbage, EA has managed to destroy anything but their Ultimate Team heavy monetization. I was stupid enough to buy their 2024 iteration and I realized you can`t play with friends anymore. That`s right! We used to connect online, choose teams, pitch, equipment, select who`s playing who or all against computer and just play. Not anymore! Unless solo, you can`t play against the computer. Your multiplayer is limited to play co op, so, only one friend in the same team in an online tournament or make your own team and make your own player and then others make their players and then you sign them to your team and then... you can only play online vs other individually created teams. Complete rubbish, but because EA is EA, they even shut down any online for FIFA18,17 and any version that you could play with friends the way that I mentioned, which was for us the true fun of the game. There`s a big FU from all of us, casual old players, but they seem to get better and better, so, maybe, they don`t need our money after all.

 

[Mihai S]

I used to buy every iteration of this game hoping each year that they had finally improved the user experience. The forums are full of reports of basic stuff that’s been broken about this game for many, many, many years.

UT and micro transactions have ruined this game. Stopped buying it a few years ago. It’s disappointing that PES/eFootball can’t keep up with FIFA/FC anymore, but I hope it makes a comeback.

 

[yukka]

I’ve bought the game every year and played online vs as the team I support. Last year I decided to give the ultimate team mode a go. Here’s how that panned out. You play against people who play just to use the same overpowered move of the month to get into the same spot and hit the same exact powered shot every time. The players are called “sweats”. Half the time the server performance leaves you feeling like your players are running in treacle, particularly at the weekends. And while it is “possible” to play the mode without spending real money, the amount of time you spend watching animations as you hand in squad after squad of players you don’t want to get a single pack or 1/10th of the objectives complete to unlock one good player is ridiculous. Game is designed to make you spend as long as possible in the menus until you cave and buy coins and packs.

It’s not talked about enough just how bad it is. Heavily monetised isn’t the half of it. Heavily monetised with terrible gameplay and performance while sapping your spirit with endless slow menus you have to access hundreds of times if you don’t want to pay actual cash. I didn’t spend anything but I also had to stop playing because I played more hours than any previous fifa and had nowhere near the same satisfaction. I won’t be buying this years and I’ll never play ultimate team again.

 

[toooooot]

Love the first picture. Woman player against man and she`s in control, protecting the ball. That`s as real as you`d get from this type of game

It was the last straw for me. If you follow their implementation of women in the game, you know they tried to popularize it for years. But obviously, 99% of their player base did not give a crap about female modes.
Then they were like, but what if you dont have a choice? What if somebody I have never heard about and who weighs 50 pounds can defend better than Virgil van Dijk. What if this 10th rate female attacker has better stats than Haaland? That is like playing a fantasy game, and a wizard uses Tesla to travel rather than use some magic or at least a horse. They literally tried everything to make people play with female players. Well, the mandatory women inf FUT and outrageously buffed stats have finally worked.

 

[yukka]

It was the last straw for me. If you follow their implementation of women in the game, you know they tried to popularize it for years. But obviously, 99% of their player base did not give a crap about female modes.
Then they were like, but what if you dont have a choice? What if somebody I have never heard about and who weighs 50 pounds can defend better than Virgil van Dijk. What if this 10th rate female attacker has better stats than Haaland? That is like playing a fantasy game, and a wizard uses Tesla to travel rather than use some magic or at least a horse. They literally tried everything to make people play with female players. Well, the mandatory women inf FUT and outrageously buffed stats have finally worked.

They added women to the Ultimate team making them equal to men, as in the best female keeper is as good as the best male keeper. The best female players are as good as the best male players. I didn’t dislike this (I played my only UT last season and won’t play again) but they did it to expand the player pool because it was financially advantageous to give you more chance of getting players you don’t want so you spend money.

 

[toooooot]

They added women to the Ultimate team making them equal to men, as in the best female keeper is as good as the best male keeper. The best female players are as good as the best male players. I didn’t dislike this (I played my only UT last season and won’t play again) but they did it to expand the player pool because it was financially advantageous to give you more chance of getting players you don’t want so you spend money.

The problem is not women, the problem is that this is like introducing into the game an object or feature that does not fit in. It insults common sense. It would be pretty much the same if 8 year old players were added as well. Why not add 8 year olds? It would expand the base too.
I said it above, they tried everything to make women popular, and vast majority of the playr base could not care less. Women's football is not something anyone beside the players themselves needs.
But rather than leaving where it was, a niche mode that just exists there, they forced it. It is mandatory because the most popular mode has it on to insult your common sense. Female players do not play along men no matter how much activists would love to make it happen because there is a reason for that. There are light years between men and women in sports. "But they still can, it is just a virtual game, oh why do you hate women."
I guess my problem is that I have a brain that allows me to think rationally. I don't know what fifa makers have.

 

[yukka]

The problem is not women, the problem is that this is like introducing into the game an object or feature that does not fit in. It insults common sense. It would be pretty much the same if 8 year old players were added as well. Why not add 8 year olds? It would expand the base too.
I said it above, they tried everything to make women popular, and vast majority of the playr base could not care less. Women's football is not something anyone beside the players themselves needs.
But rather than leaving where it was, a niche mode that just exists there, they forced it. It is mandatory because the most popular mode has it on to insult your common sense. Female players do not play along men no matter how much activists would love to make it happen because there is a reason for that. There are light years between men and women in sports. "But they still can, it is just a virtual game, oh why do you hate women."
I guess my problem is that I have a brain that allows me to think rationally. I don't know what fifa makers have.

If you compare combining the highest professional leagues of men and women with including 8 year olds you are straying into dodgy territory. I learnt more about popular female footballers than I had done previously by playing last years FIFA ultimate team and there will be plenty of people who felt the same way. They were equally matched because it made sense in a competitive sense for people who wanted to play as their favourite wsl players and it would be more interesting for girls who might be inspired to play football by seeing popular female players in the most popular game.

What they should have done though is allow people to choose if packs they open contain male or female footballers or both but because of the overarching reason for the mode (to generate vast amounts of wealth for EA shareholders) they did not do that as it would reduce the pool of lower rated players they could continually fill your packs with.

No one at EA is concerned with your feelings about mixing men and women. They have licences for the female teams which cost money and that money needs to be shown to generate money from selling packs. That is as simple as it gets. I won’t play the mode myself ever again but improving popularity of female football so they get more opportunities for licensing and advertising leading to better training facilities and better training staff and improvements in the skill level of the leagues etc is a good thing.