Rumors have recently been circulating that Cristiano Ronaldo might be leaving Real Madrid, which presents a bit of a problem for EA Sports since he’s been added into the game as a Real Madrid player. If he changes, it’ll be a headache to replace everything about him with whoever he joins.
Cristiano Ronaldo has been a Real Madrid player since 2009, eight years ago, and for him to change now, before FIFA 18 can come out, runs the risk of a lot of coding and modeling work going to waste. Ronaldo is also the star marketing player of the game, even being put in its debut trailer (wearing the Real Madrid uniform).
If the rumors are true, Ronaldo is leaving Real Madrid due to allegations of tax fraud, and if he does decide to leave then the process is irreversible. If the allegations are true, not only will EA Sports have a modeling and coding nightmare on its hands, but EA in general will have to pull every bit of marketing that shows Ronaldo.
Ronaldo also plays some sort of role in the game’s “The Journey” story mode. While the players Alex Hunter can interact with depend on what team he joins, joining Real Madrid and talking to a player that’s no longer part of the team would be rather immersion-breaking.
FIFA 18 is one of the things that EA focused the most heavily on at its E3 conference last week, alongside Star Wars: Battlefront 2. With how huge FIFA is in Europe and other soccer-crazy areas of the world, it’s likely that the game will be bought by a lot of people.
We’ll just have to wait and see if the rumors about Cristiano Ronaldo leaving Real Madrid are true. If they are, hopefully EA can re-do all of the assets needed to get him out of the game and put someone else in in the months left before the game releases.
