FIFA 22 might be the last ‘FIFA’ game as we have known the franchise to be for decades now. This was made clear after EA Sports confirmed its consideration of dropping the branding that comes from its licensing agreement with the global footballing body.

Despite no confirmations made about the new name, there have been reports about the game taking up the name “EA Sports FC”. This is reasonable as it is a name that the developing firm frequently uses in its FIFA games.

“As we look ahead, we’re also exploring the idea of renaming our global EA SPORTS football games,” EA Sports group general manager Cam Weber said in a blog post on EA’s website on Thursday. “This means we’re reviewing our naming rights agreement with FIFA, which is separate from all our other official partnerships and licenses across the football world.”

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The surprising announcement was dropped in a post celebrating the launch success of FIFA 22. The game has already amassed 9.1 million players globally since its release. Despite the bombshell, EA Sports noted that the rebranding wouldn’t affect any of its other licences with football clubs or international teams.

That means FIFA 23 or EA Sports FC 23 or whatever it’s called will continue to have more than 17,000 athletes from over 700 teams, and 100 stadiums hosting over 30 leagues.

This could be seen as an effort from the game’s creators to separate itself from a branding that has slowly become toxic over the years. This is with the global governing body’s high-ranking officials being indicted for wire fraud, racketeering, and money laundering. This is over corruption investigations into the FIFA 2018 Russia and upcoming 2022 Qatar World Cup bids.

But it will definitely be odd to refer to a game we’ve known for years in any other name. In fact, we might just end up seeing a whole different name rather than EA Sports FC 23 as it just doesn’t roll off the tongue.

This comes a few months after Japanese developers Konami made a similar move by renaming its PES franchise to eFootball. Well, let’s just say that hasn’t gone so well so far.