EA Sports Announces Return of College Football Video Game

College football is returning to EA Sports. On Tuesday morning, the video game company announced it’s bringing back a college football video game after a seven-year hiatus. The details are limited at this point, but EA Sports’ Twitter account simply says “College Football is coming back” with the title “EA Sports College Football”

“As we look for the momentum that we’re building on in sports, it all starts with the passion of our fans and the opportunities of what they are interested in,” EA Sports vice president and general manager Daryl Holt told ESPN. “I don’t think a visit where I go outside wearing a piece of EA Sports branded apparel, that someone doesn’t go, ‘Hey, when is college football coming back?’”

The last college football video game EA Sports developed was NCAA Football 14, which was released in July 2013. The series was placed on hiatus in September of that year after three major conferences pulled their trademark licenses from EA. Additionally, there were lawsuits involving the use of player likenesses in-game. In October 2019, the NCAA voted to “clear the way for the amateur athletes to ‘benefit from the use of their name, image and likeness.”

“We must embrace change to provide the best possible experience for college athletes,” NCAA board chair Michael Drake said in a statement at the time. “Additional flexibility in this area can and must continue to support college sports as a part of higher education. This modernization for the future is a natural extension of the numerous steps NCAA members have taken in recent years to improve support for student-athletes, including full cost of attendance and guaranteed scholarships.”

This all started when California and other states placing a law that states that college athletes can make money from endorsements. For California, the law will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2023. “It’s going to initiate dozens of other states to introduce similar legislation,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said on the Uninterrupted talk show The Shop. “And it’s going to change college sports for the better by having now the interest finally of the athletes on par with the interests of the institution. Now we are rebalancing that power.”