FIFA may not have a football game right now, but it does have a Rocket League esports tournament
It's not rocket science.
FIFA may not have released a licensed football game recently, but it's ready to team up with Rocket League to introduce an all-new category to its FIFA Esports World Cup.
In a "groundbreaking partnership", FIFAe – that's FIFA's esports arm – says Rocket League will feature in the upcoming FIFAe World Cup, "signif[ying] a major step in FIFA's commitment to embrace the entire ecosystem and drive the global growth of football esports globally".
The competition invites the 16 participating nations to submit three players and one substitute, with the nations themselves selected "based on the number of representatives from each country in previous Rocket League Majors".
It's not clear what cash prize participants will be fighting for, but more information about the "final event" is promised at "a later stage".
"The FIFAe World Cup featuring Rocket League marks a new era for FIFAe, providing a groundbreaking platform for FIFA's member assocations to compete on one of the most relevant esports titles," said Christian Volk, FIFA's director of eFootball and gaming.
"This milestone partnership highlights our commitment to evolve our football esports ecosystem and continue to build the biggest stages for all communities to fame their game."
ICYMI, 2K is rumoured to have secured the official FIFA license to develop the next FIFA game.
That's according to unverified claims from a retailer which allege that "the partnership is confirmed, and 2K will be developing a new football game series", albeit without sharing their source.
Whilst not confirmed in any official capacity at all – which means we can only take this news as a hefty rumour for now – it does back up prior claims from earlier this year that 2K and FIFA may have been in talks for the former to succeed development of the FIFA series after EA announced it would be taking its football franchise forward without FIFA branding.
Not that that seems to have done EA any harm; EA's long-running football series might have jettisoned the FIFA license, but the publisher was keen to let everyone know it's doing just fine without it, announcing that this year's iteration, EA Sports FC 24, reached 11.3m players in its first week of release.