EA Sports will stop producing college football game

[JonLP24]

Video game company EA Sports will stop producing a college football game after years of legal battles over using the likenesses of college athletes.

The announcement from the company came after the Southeastern Conference, Big Ten and Pac-12 joined the NCAA last month in saying they would no longer license their conference trademarks in the game.

In July, EA Sports' First Amendment defense against claims made by former Arizona State and Nebraska quarterback Sam Keller that the company illegally used his likeness was rejected by a federal court. That followed a similar rejection in a case involving former Rutgers quarterback Ryan Hart.

"We have been stuck in the middle of a dispute between the NCAA and student-athletes who seek compensation for playing college football," EA Sports said in a statement on its website. "Just like companies that broadcast college games and those that provide equipment and apparel, we follow rules that are set by the NCAA -- but those rules are being challenged by some student-athletes. For our part, we are working to settle the lawsuits with the student-athletes."

http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/9728042/ea-sports-stop-producing-college-football-game

I've loved the series, often preferring it to the Madden game. Thing I loved most was exporting rosters.

It is the right thing to do to end the series.

[LeftOfSelf-Centered]

1. Oh, well...

All this doesn't really affect me, because, as much as I would have loved to play a college football videogame, I was never able to; there were no PC versions, and, even if I had had a console, college sports games were not distributed in Europe and, up to the previous console generation, they were region locked as well.

So I was happy to hear that the NCAA had broken off ties with EA Sports, because I hate exclusivity agreements, and, the way things were going with EA, I would never get to play a CFB game. I'd be curious to see some other company have a try at making a college football game, just to see if they can do it better.

I guess a big part of the problem is that a game like this is not going to do well without licensed teams, so the big question going forward will be how the NCAA is going to handle licensing in the future.

[qazplm]

2. dont know why they couldnt

continue the season with generic players.

Heck, with a little effort they could have just introduced a randomized element into the game and then done generic random ratings for each team so that they don't exactly match the current players but keep them within a range so that the teams more or less reflect the relative strengths from year to year.

Or you could have started with recruiting and fielded a fresh team that might not even reflect reality if you recruit well enough (or poorly).

[JonLP24]

4. That seems like an excellent idea

but I think another road-block is lack of major conference trademarks. They could start-up with generic conferences but don't think it would sell.

[LeftOfSelf-Centered]

5. I don't think the players are the problem...

The problem would be not having licensed teams. How many people would skip over a college football title where they couldn't play as their favourite team in a representation of their home stadium? This would be less of a problem on PC, since real team names, logos, uniforms, conferences and maybe even stadiums would be added back in by mods (especially if the game actively supported modding). On a console that would be a lot more difficult and you'd be stuck with generic teams.

On the other hand, I think, a lot less people would care about the players, because, if you play in dynasty mode, by the time you go through four or five seasons your team consists entirely of randomly generated players that you recruited over the years.

[mutian]

3. Gaming

So, why the right version?