Community ManagerHey there. Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts with us. Appreciate it!
Hey Aljo, appreciate you taking the time to keep these conversations going. Has the NHL team or other EA Sports titles ever seriously looked into a live-service or subscription model instead of annual releases?
Not asking for future plans — just curious if it’s been discussed before, and how those talks usually go between the dev team, the league, and the business side. I think the community would love to know more about what factors EA has to weigh when deciding how to release and update the game.
Well over 10yrs ago they were thinking about it then decided against it. We have EA Play is what ended up happening and it never became a thing again. They probably realized it would be more work adding and removing content and that people might not always sub so they would lose in the long run.
https://www.eurogamer.net/ea-sports-absolutely-a-time-for-subs
Thank you so much for taking the time to read and share that info — it really helps put things in perspective. That makes a lot of sense.
I’m just wondering now if, with the advances in AI programming, the model I’m suggesting might actually make more sense financially. If the game was built as the ultimate fan experience, couldn’t a lot of the ongoing updates be handled automatically — keeping things fresh without constantly relying on the full dev team? It seems like that could reduce the workload and still keep the content flowing year-round.
Really appreciate you sharing your insight!
Community ManagerAs KlariskraysNHL mentioned, it's been investigated in the past. I would assume it's been looked into since as well, but don't have any information on that.
Will the winter classic game mod will come back one day in future games?
ManuNHL according to EA_Aljo its s very costly and time consuming process to get the licensing and rights for venue etc. for a feature that doesn't seem to be worth it used in an offline game mode. I myself would love it but the game unfortunately and many users have gone to online modes which generate the company more money so that's where the bulk of attention goes. In my opinion and many other die hard fans Ultimate team really has ruined simulation gaming in all of EAs sports releases. It's almost like they should release two separate games with two separate development teams but that wouldn't make sense for them money wise so we just have do deal with so many missing game features in offline.
Community Manager
