For many years, football video games have, to a large extent, been captured by the commercial hegemony of Electronic Arts. And I am not referring exclusively to the controversy surrounding loot boxes, microtransactions, or the monetization model associated with Ultimate Team. The problem runs deeper: it is a paradigm shift in which retention, recurring monetization, and the live-service model have, in many respects, occupied the space that should belong to the actual simulation of football.
A game that presents itself as a sports simulator should have, as its fundamental premise, the convincing reproduction of the elements that constitute the sport: ball physics, player biomechanics, off-the-ball movement, artificial intelligence, positioning, inertia, physical contact, build-up play, tempo, fatigue, decision-making, and, above all, organic unpredictability. Yet for years, we have witnessed almost the opposite trend: artificial responsiveness, excessive speed, spectacle, and mechanisms designed to keep players permanently engaged have increasingly taken precedence.
The result is a rather curious paradox: technology has evolved extraordinarily, while the virtual representation of football, in certain fundamental aspects, appears to have regressed.
And this regression is not merely a matter of two or three years. For many of us, it feels like roughly a decade of stagnation — or even regression in certain fundamental aspects of gameplay. We have vastly more powerful hardware, sophisticated game engines, motion capture, advanced artificial intelligence, and astonishing graphical capabilities; yet here we are in 2026, still discussing problems that should belong to previous generations.
That is precisely why I would be genuinely pleased if 2K Sports decided to seriously enter this competition. Not because I consider 2K some kind of immaculate entity — obviously, it is not. We are all well aware of the criticism surrounding microtransactions, aggressive monetization, virtual currencies, and similar pay-to-win practices. I have no illusions about that.
The issue is something else.
Let there be competition.
Let there be competitive pressure. Let two major companies be forced to compete not merely over licenses, players, and consumers, but also over quality, innovation, physics, artificial intelligence, and sporting authenticity.
As fans and enthusiasts of football video games, we should support any movement capable of breaking this kind of industrial complacency. We do not need to turn 2K into a religion or believe that it will magically save the genre. We simply need to recognize an elementary principle of the market: when genuine competition exists, complacency becomes much harder to maintain.
If 2K comes along with loot boxes, microtransactions, and other practices that I personally consider questionable, I will continue to criticize them. There is no contradiction in that.
At this moment, however, my priority is something else: I want football brought back to the fundamentals of football.
I want to see the ball obeying physics, players respecting their biomechanics, teams displaying coherent tactical behavior, convincing physical battles, natural movement, different match tempos, and artificial intelligence that actually understands the game instead of merely executing scripts designed to manufacture artificially exciting matches.
I do not want a casino dressed up as a sports simulator.
I want a football simulator that, above all else, actually knows how to simulate football.
