Madden and College Basketball Exclusivity News, College Football Patch Highlight a Week of Unrest

It was a shockingly big week of news, and almost every major game/sport got in on the fun. It wasn’t necessarily a week full of good news for sports gamers, and some of the news either goes in the rumor pile or unconfirmed for now, but there is so much to talk about that I’m going to have sections for:

• Madden exclusivity renewal rumors

• A brewing fight over college basketball exclusivity

• A College Football 26 patch and server update

• The EA FC 26 trailer

So let’s jump right into things.

Hey folks, I just want to give you all a heads up that next Wednesday I'll be launching the premium version of Not Just Another Roster Update. I’m stoked to launch something that has been in the works for a couple months now, and I’m even more excited to evolve it once it starts running so I can get more feedback from you all about what you might want in it. This is 100 percent a newsletter for the OS community, and I want it to resonate with you enough that you want to help support it because I think it’s an important — and new way — to bring our community together and also give a centralized voice to the type of sports games we want out there. This means while I have an initial plan for the premium newsletter, I will actively be seeking out your feedback at the usual email spot, [email protected]

This newsletter you're reading right now will go unchanged and will still hit your inbox every Friday, but the premium version will be a paid subscription and that will be an extra edition that hits your inbox every Wednesday. Regardless of whether you sign-up or not for the premium version, a preview of it will hit your inbox on Wednesdays just in case a topic ever does interest you. I'll have a longer write-up next week on OS and the forums that details what will be in the premium newsletter and why I'm helping to launch it, but I just want to thank you all once again for subscribing and making this first year of the newsletter a bigger success than I could have possibly imagined. Your support means everything to me, and I hope to continue to be worthy of your time.

Rumor: Madden Seems Poised to Renew Exclusivity Agreement With NFL — With A Twist

Both the NFL and EA have made it clear they have no plans to stop working together anytime soon, but there had been enough smoke over the past two years to indicate the NFL had been a little unhappy with EA at times. It seemed like an NFL 2K arcade game was really going to happen for a moment, there were rumors about the NFL being mad about the quality of some aspects of Madden, and the NFL/EA exclusivity deal was set to run out after this year’s version of Madden — and had even been expedited by the NFL since they did not pick up the option year at the end of the current contract.

However, Mike Straw of Insider Gaming (among other places) did say this week (in the video below) that a renewal of the EA/Madden exclusivity deal seems all but confirmed to be reported later this year. (Also, quick aside to send Mike good vibes, he got some potentially scary health news this week so wishing him all the best.)

Now, Mike’s sources could be wrong or things could change, but this always seemed like the most likely outcome. That said, the most interesting bit to come out of the report is that Mike was very clear his sources said the NFL pushed for exclusivity this time while EA wanted to give up exclusivity to save some money on the agreement. This is certainly interesting to hear because over the years us commoners have continued to wonder who continues to push for exclusivity the most: the NFL or EA.

There is almost no universe where EA walks away from an agreement with the NFL if the sticking point relates to exclusivity or not, so it’s not like EA would truly balk at a demand like this. Still, people might be wondering why the NFL would want exclusivity because there is a belief you could get more money by offering the contract to multiple partners.

Well, a couple things on that topic:

• Even if EA isn’t crazy about exclusivity, the NFL is still going to ask for and get more from EA than they would otherwise if the deal were not exclusive.

• It’s not like this is the only video game agreement the NFL will come to, even if it’s the only one most of us care about. There are mobile games, web experiences, and other “digital” products that the NFL can still ink with other partners even if there is an exclusive “simulation” deal with EA.

• Video games aren’t a massive piece of the NFL’s profit pie. The NFL has made it to a place a lot of the biggest entities get to where they’re so confident they can do no wrong and people will just buy their product no matter what that they set the terms and everyone else just agrees to them. Why should the NFL worry about having multiple partners for a simulation football game, which would also mean you have to keep an eye on all the potential “brand” issues that come along with multiple games, if it’s not a core part of the business? After all, this is the running theory behind why the NFL went exclusive in the first place many years ago — they felt 2K was “cheapening” its brand by selling a game for $20.

  • Of course, I could make the case video games have more importance than the singular monetary bottom line because Madden can create new fans of the sport, reach a younger audience, and those who play the game a lot pour more time into that NFL experience than they ever will watching/reading/listening about the NFL anywhere else. With that in mind, the NFL should want the “best” experience possible out there for its video games, which likely results from having more than one game in town — and that would still be the case even if almost everyone loved Madden.

Some people might also be surprised EA would want out of the exclusivity deal, but I think EA has smartened up over the years in terms of understanding what deals do and do not matter. They didn’t want to deal with FIFA’s terms and simply decided to rename their game. They didn’t want to deal with the NCAA and so they just renamed NCAA Football to College Football. EA does need the NFL, but EA’s game is called Madden NFL Football not just NFL Football. At the same time, it’s not like you could walk away from the NFL like you could the NCAA or FIFA because the teams themselves and the NFLPA are likely a package deal. With something like college sports or soccer there is more “mess” involved with licensing deals since the rights are more splintered because more groups are involved. This is not the case with the NFL.

All this is to say EA is right to think if the game wasn’t exclusive or just called Madden Football rather than Madden NFL Football they would be just fine. But they’re not dumb, and they know a game with Patty Mahoney playing QB for the Missouri Leaders probably doesn’t sell as well as having Patrick Mahomes on the KC Chiefs, so if the NFL wants exclusivity, it gets exclusivity.

As for those of you feeling despair over the news, I get it. We all want more games. However, I’m not going to write a ton about the repercussions of this deal until it’s truly “confirmed” because it’s not worth lamenting things that haven’t yet officially happened. The only other thing I will say is that I would have been way more bummed about this news a couple years ago. Madden is still not the game I want it to be, but man, it has made strides all while 2K has been fumbling with NBA 2K the last couple seasons. Either way, I’m not sure I trust either company to make a “perfect” product these days, which would be why I would love to see each push each other more than anything else.

Regardless, we still have to see what happens in the months ahead, but this one feels more wrapped up than the exclusivity deal relating to college basketball.

2K Pleads With Colleges Not To Accept EA’s College Basketball Exclusivity Deal

After another week of news about the potential future of college basketball games, I think I’m ready to say both 2K and EA suck in terms of how they’re approaching this (and I wonder who the mystery third company was who also made a bid to make a college basketball game). Matt Brown’s Extra Points newsletter had some fresh intel this week about 2K going to individual colleges and telling them not to accept the CLC’s recommendation, which was to sign an exclusive deal with EA. There’s more in the premium version of the newsletter that I won’t reveal since that wouldn’t be right, but even in the preview version you can see 2K’s college basketball “game” proposal:

Raise your hand if you want your college experience to be with a small subset of teams within NBA 2K’s MyTeam mode? Come on, don’t everyone raise their hands at once…Wait, no one is raising their hands because nobody wants that? Oh…

I’ve been banging the drum for some time that Take Two/2K Sports just seem very risk averse these days when it comes to sports games. 2K could have made an arcade football game by now or gone after a non-NFL license if they wanted to showcase their chops again and have decided against it. They haven’t made a “new” sports experience in many years at this point, and I just don’t think they want to gamble on sports games overall.

Now, sure, it’s admirable enough they didn’t want an exclusive agreement to do this deal, but they could not even ask for an exclusive agreement after proposing something like that. They were going to take some popular college teams, create paid DLC, and then incorporate it into MyTeam to “test” out the viability before expanding the number of teams in the years ahead. Then and only then would they assess the “viability” of a standalone game.

I’m sorry, but that sort of experience says to me “we want to see this fail” more than anything. I’m positive incorporating a College Hoops 2K experience into NBA 2K as paid DLC could work (we had World Cup DLC within FIFA multiple times and so forth), but if the idea was to have a “tournament” style mode within NBA 2K’s MyTeam mode as the way to revive the college game, well, then that smacks of sabotage to me.

With this info in mind, I would almost be inclined to go with the mystery box “third proposal,” except that the CLC has been clear the only company that wants to put out a standalone game on day one is EA. The issue is EA only wants to put out the game if it gets exclusivity, so they’re being uncool as well. And while EA won’t walk away from the NFL if they make demands about exclusivity, it’s far more likely EA would walk away from the CLC if there were a major fight over exclusivity.

It’s worth remembering this news cycle only began in the first place because Extra Points was able to get its hands on the initial proposals, which threw everybody’s timelines off — as indicated by both EA and 2K still not putting out anything official about a future product at this point — so there’s still ongoing negotiations to be had here, but I’m not crazy about the way any of the video game companies have handled things so far.

College Football 26 Gets Patch And Server Side Recruiting Update

On the positive side of things, EA released a server update on Thursday that fixed a issue within dynasty mode that was penalizing skill caps no matter how extreme a position change was. It also made it so Athletes at their first position wouldn’t deal with a skill caps issue either. This is basically a universal win for most folks, but because it’s only a server-side update for now (server updates are easier to quickly push to consoles than full-on patches) it only impacts online dynasties for now. Offline folks will need to wait for a patch to be released if they want that update.

On the more tumultuous side of things, days before that server update EA released a College Football 26 patch that everyone got on July 15. Certain communities and content creators lost their minds over this specific note:

Within OS, that tweak hasn’t really caused much of a stir, and I tend to agree with the muted response by most OS community folks so far. I haven’t noticed much of a change, and if anything, INTs have not been a major problem one way or another within dynasty mode/offline modes at any point so far with ‘26. If there is OS unrest, it is related to the patch note about linebackers no longer being slow on running plays. Some OSers have mentioned they think that’s causing the running game to be much harder — I don’t personally find it much more challenging to run so far, but it might also depend on how easy you thought it already was to run before the patch (I thought it was too easy and said as much in last week’s newsletter, but some others did not share those same feelings).

No matter how you feel about the patch, I bring up the general unrest because it spawned some renewed conversations about comp vs. sim gameplay, and also a discussion about a lack of gameplay styles (comp/sim/arcade) in College Football 26. Content creator GutFoxx has a video that I don’t 100 percent agree with in terms of the framing about what “sim” players want from the game, but I do think it’s worth watching in the sense that you get a good idea about the general dispute going on outside of OS and what each side is thinking about things.

(GutFoxx can absolutely be an acquired taste, and he’s not always rational in the moment during his streams, but I do think his voice is coming from a place of just wanting a better product, and he’s much more balanced out in his YouTube videos — which is all a way of me saying go easy on the lad if you don’t agree with his takes about what “sim” gamers really want.)

Ultimately, this whole thing comes down to a mindset difference between different audiences. I think the “comp” crowd essentially wants football games to be chess. This means if comp players call the “right” play, or shade a receiver the “right” way, or read a QB and get both hands on the ball with a defender, they want a specific binary true/false outcome. When I say they want chess, I do mean they want to be rewarded like you are in chess for reading your opponent and predicting what they’ll do.

I don’t have any major issues with that, even if I’ll always point out we’re not playing “balanced” games. Even if I ignore the pay-to-win aspects of a mode like Ultimate Team, perfect balance is not something you achieve — or can even strive for really — in most sports games that aren’t designed like Rocket League or Rematch. Balance is important, but we’re not playing Counter-Strike or something along those lines where both sides are essentially always equal, and the only difference is what guns you can buy before a round. Player ratings, team ratings, home/away factors, playbooks, and so on are going to change the experience and inherently make it unbalanced. Again, this doesn’t mean it’s incorrect for comp players (or anyone else) to want more predictable true/false outcomes, I just don’t know if satisfying binary outcomes are achievable even if they get more of their gameplay asks.

On the other side of things, “sim” folks do want more randomness, but it’s not just about randomness. They want to feel real differences between how players move and react when they’re a 90 overall versus when they’re a 40 overall. They still want their coaching choices and reads on the field to matter just like comp players do, but there’s more leeway for things not going to plan when you’re using crappy players. They want sprayed throws and fumbled snaps. They want football plays even if they’re not always going to go their way.

So when it comes to something like INTs and how each “side” reacts to the amount of them occurring in any given game, yes, some of that does come back to looking in the mirror. Did the game really change that much or are you just making crap reads? Even if someone doesn’t want to be honest with themselves when answering that question, the bigger point is that neither side is likely to ever be 100 percent happy with EA’s balancing choice. I’m also not even factoring in the placebo effect of thinking something major changed just because it was listed in the patch notes because that’s a whole other sect of people. There are folks who don’t connect their game to the internet or try to revert to Patch XYZ because they think the game was “ruined” by a change somewhere along the way (this is most pronounced in the NBA 2K community). More power to those people since you have to do what you have to do in order to enjoy a game, but that is something else that is only on the periphery of this particular topic.

Simply put, people play the game differently and have wildly different skill levels. Being an OSer, my view has always been that you should balance the game however you want for online play, but just give us usable sliders that work. If you poll a lot of us on OS, the issue with the passing game so far in CFB 26 has not been INTs at all, it’s been a lack of incompletions, aggression by CPU QBs (they’re Brad Johnson-level checkdown cowards!), and not seeing a wide enough gap between the elite and crappy CPU QBs. This is exasperated by the sliders only being somewhat effective at curing some of these perceived issues, which is a bigger problem than any singular tweak in a gameplay patch.

Of course, the other thing EA has tried in an effort to make everyone happy is splitting the gameplay styles into groups. Madden has had the Comp/Sim/Arcade gameplay styles — which are not in College Football — and EA FC is now looking at pursuing these options, which is why I really want to talk about the EA FC 26 trailer this week.

EA FC 26 Trailer Introduces “Authentic” And “Competitive” Gameplay Styles

As anyone who follows EA Sports games knows, if an idea shows up in one of its sports games and gains any traction, chances are it will show up in others. I honestly don’t know how successful EA’s gameplay styles have been in Madden, but EA will be introducing Authentic and Competitive gameplay styles for EA FC 26.

In retrospect it seems very obvious EA FC 26 would go this route. I’m a bit of a lapsed FIFA/EA FC fan at this point because I grew tired of the passing, lack of penalties, and lack of midfield play over the last couple years, but for those of you not in the know, EA FC 25 was heavily criticized by the comp crowd and essentially branded as the worst “comp” version of the game in many years. EA did release a patch about five months after release that did calm some comp folks down a bit, but they were never really happy. The reason a lot of the comp crowd felt the game was so bad is because they thought EA had balanced the game for the sim crowd at launch. Now, that’s funny because if you read the thoughts of many OSers, the sim crowd did not like the gameplay either and felt it was still not realistic (and thus it was balanced more for the “comp” crowd than not), so really no one was happy.

This is why I have always had some general concerns with gameplay styles. If you already think EA, 2K, or whoever can’t balance the game right on one setting, what in the world would make you think they can balance it on two or more settings? It’s a very sound and logical plan to want different gameplay styles that speak to different sorts of players, but it still takes people to tune these gameplay settings. You need a group of developers balancing the “authentic” style and tweaking it after launch to satisfy that group, and the same goes for the “competitive” gameplay style.

Are you properly investing in that analysis for post-launch updates? And can you truly make those gameplay styles independent of one another? What if certain animations are thought of as bad in one gameplay style but not another? What if penalties arise from the way physics interactions happen overall rather than a gameplay slider? Can you turn certain animations on in one gameplay style but not the other? There is so much that can cause one or both gameplay styles to change, so how do you incorporate that into a gameplay style? Are gameplay styles just EA developers tweaking the sliders on their end and then sending it to us, or does more go into it than that?

This is why I’ll always pound the pavement for quality sliders being the most precise way to give a person the experience they want, but even sliders can’t control everything. If physics or certain animations cause problems, those are things only EA can solve with actual development tools. This is why gameplay styles are theoretically a good idea, but unless a company explicitly says the game is being designed with gameplay styles in mind from the start, I wonder how effective they can truly be. Either way, I’m very fascinated to see how the gameplay styles work out in FC 26 because at least we’ll have another game that’s trying them out. And even if they’re somewhat of a disappointment in the end, I still want the extra data points.

Beyond that, the launch trailer EA released this week was the best one they’ve released in years for EA FC. I’m more excited than I’ve been in many moons to scope out the game and give it a real shot once it arrives on September 26.

Until next time y’all. And, as always, thanks for reading.

-Chase