Almost a week ago the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, ordered his army to invade Ukrainian territory and, since that moment, there have been endless shows of support for Ukraine in what (almost) everyone sees as a flagrant aggression of the territorial integrity of a country. And after days seeing how many Western companies limited or blocked their activity in the Russian nation, now it is his turn to respond to the video game industry itself.
Positioning against the invasion
The sports world has seen in recent days a cascade of bans and bans for all Russian athletes that has now been extended to one of the most popular eSports, FIFA. From Electronic Arts, and EA Sports as responsible for the series, they have announced that both the Russian team, as well as the teams of all the leagues of that country (the Premier League and the Rosgosstrakh) will be removed from all products related to the franchise. Not just from the main game.
Specifically, this removal of content will affect the main game of the franchise, which is FIFA 22, but also to FIFA Online and FIFA Mobile, which have a good part of the permissions to use national teams, teams and symbols of the Russian Football Federation that are later used, even, in the animation stands of the stadiums. In this way, the team led by Valeri Karpin (the legendary RC Celta de Vigo player), and which has players like Denis Cheryshev and Artom Dziuba, will have to wait for a solution to the conflict to see each other again in the game.
A statement from EA SPORTS FIFA: pic.twitter.com/v3pZvpblgS
— EA SPORTS FIFA (@EASPORTSFIFA) March 2, 2022
The statement from Electronic Arts leaves no doubt as to what the reasons are for the company to have removed all content from Russia in a withering manner, since «EA Sports stands in solidarity with the Ukrainian people and, like many other voices in the world of football, calls for peace and an end to the invasion of Ukraine. On these lines you have the complete text announcing that drastic decision.
Final measures?
Today and with the current situation in Ukraine, it is clear that the ban on Russian teams will remain as long as the troops of that country do not turn around and stop the invasion, although from EA Sports they add that they will be attentive to how these events unfold. This invites us to think that they could go back if there is an acceptable resolution of the conflict, or continue if the result of the end of hostilities is not what the international community expects.
This seems to be deduced from the Electronic Arts text itself, where they warn that «we will keep the community updated on any action we take and we thank players for their patience as we work on these updates.” So remember, in a very short time any trace of the Russian national team and the teams in their leagues will disappear from the three official FIFA that are active at the moment. It only remains to wait for sanity to prevail, obviously not to recover this bit of FIFA 22 that is going to be lost, but for the good of millions of Ukrainians who are suffering the consequences of a conflict that they have not provoked.
EA entry removes Russia from all your FIFAs: what does it imply? was first published in The Output.
