Electronic Arts will no longer make NCAA football games. Instead, the publisher will release titles based on the college sport without the official NCAA license.
The publisher has a three-year contract with the Collegiate Licensing Company, the corporation that oversees official licensing for many major U.S. universities.
“CLC, as trademark licensing agent for schools, signed an agreement extending EA’s rights to produce and sell a College Video Game for a three-year term,” CLC spokesperson Andrew Giangola told GamesBeat.
The new deal between the CLC and EA begins on July 1, 2014 and doesn’t grant exclusive rights to EA Sports’ games, as first reported by Joystiq.
EA previously had an exclusive deal with the NCAA. It agreed in July 2012 not to renew that license as part of its $27 million settlement in an antitrust lawsuit that claimed it unfairly benefited from crowding competitors out of the market.
This leaves an opening for other publishers to make a deal with the CLC to produce a college football video game. We reached out to 2K, which previously released a series of football titles that competed with EA, but the publisher declined to comment.
On Wednesday, the NCAA announced it would not renew its contract with EA. The publisher quickly commented that it would continue working with the CLC to produce college football games featuring real teams and bowl games.