EA vastasi Zlatan Ibrahimovićin FIFA 21 -peliä koskevaan ihmettelyyn – ”lisensointi on kunnossa”
Ruotsalainen jalkapallotähti väitti taannoin Twitterin välityksellä, että EA ei ole henkilökohtaisesti saanut häneltä lupaa FIFA 21 -esiintymiseen. Ibrahimović totesi myös ettei hän pidä siitä, jos jokin liitto tai ryhmittymä mihin hän ei välttämättä edes tietoisesti kuulu, tekee nyt rahaa hänen nimellään ja olemuksellaan. Myös Gareth Bale ihmetteli samaa asiaa.
EA:n kaksiosaisen lausunnon mukaan pelaajan lisensointi on kuitenkin hoidettu virallisia reittejä pitkin. Yhteistyötä on tehty ainakin FIFPron, AC Milanin, Totteham Hotspurin ja Premier Leaguen kanssa. Lausunnot on luettavissa alkuperäisessä muodossaan alta.
“EA SPORTS FIFA is the world’s leading football video game, and to create an authentic experience year after year we work with numerous leagues, teams and individual talent to secure the rights of player likeness to include in our game. One of those is a long-standing relationship with the global representative of professional football players, FIFPro, who partner with a number of licensors to negotiate deals that benefit the players and their unions.”
“We are aware of discussions around licensing of players in EA SPORTS FIFA. The current situation being played out on social media is an attempt to draw FIFA 21 into a dispute between a number of 3rd parties and has little to do with EA SPORTS.
To be very clear, we have contractual rights to include the likeness of all players currently in our game. As already stated, we acquire these licenses directly from leagues, teams, and individual players. In addition, we work with FIFPro to ensure we can include as many players as we can to create the most authentic game. In these instances, our rights to player likenesses are granted through our club agreement with AC Milan and our long-standing exclusive partnership with the Premier League, which includes all players for Tottenham Hotspur.”
