There’s another soccer — or football — game aiming to bring people a new way to enjoy their favorite sport. UFL is a free-to-play game from developer Strikerz Inc. with a focus on team building and online play as well as gameplay that separates itself from the competition.
For the better part of the last 30 years, EA Sports has dominated the soccer gaming landscape with Konami’s eFootball — formerly Pro Evolution Soccer — a distant second. UFL wants to take that number two spot on the market with even loftier goals than that.
UFL features licensed players along with a number of clubs who’s crest, jerseys, and gear will be available in the game. Those clubs include Celtic, Rangers, Sporting CP, and West Ham United, among others.
Recently, I sat down with Strikerz CEO Eugene Nashilov to talk about the game’s development, having Cristiano Ronaldo as an ambassador, the decision to be free-to-play, monetization, possible future plans, and more.
UFL is set to launch on December 5 for PlayStation 5 (PS5) and Xbox Series X/S. A PC version of the game is also coming shortly after though a date, as of publishing, has yet to be revealed.
You can read the full interview below.
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You’ve had multiple play tests for UFL. And the feedback from players for lack of a better term, for a lot of it was kind of mixed, whether like from gameplay and just how it feels. What is the thought when you see all that type of feedback and whether it’s positive, negative or whatever it may be?
I think we have always been super excited about the feedback because we are quite community driven. This was one of the one of the cornerstones we had, I think, since day one, because ourselves just a few years ago, we were the community. Right? We play football games. I started playing somewhere between 96 and 98 – I don’t remember.
And and we kind of felt that, you know, we need to stay in touch with the people who play these games and want to ask them their opinion on whether they like it or don’t like it. And of course, as you know, in football games, there is never like a perfect game. Everybody’s having his own personal opinion on what’s good and what’s not good.
We have these two games that have been on the market for some time and a huge amount of people who have pros and cons in both of them. And so I think to us, it was looking at it from a critical perspective. I think for us, it was the most important that it’s not that everyone tried and they just did not care.
Because it’s good to have critical feedback. It’s good to have very positive feedback, of course, because the critical one we analyze and the positive is just, you know, it’s just a booster for the team. I think the worst case scenario would be everyone tried and was like, “meh, I don’t know. Nothing very interesting here. Nothing to look at, nothing to try.’
UFL has seen a few delays during its development. Was there ever a concern for whether or not the game would ever actually be released as you announced delays?
We had these feelings a number of times, actually, because you strive for some specific quality and you don’t achieve and you iterate and then you reiterate and you keep going. And a number of times we felt like we’re not sure we can deliver that.
It’s just being being perfectly honest, I think, on this one. And I think that it was very personal for many of us inside the studio. Somebody started to feel that we’ll get there earlier than the others. Somebody has become confident just a few months ago.
So, it was very complicated because the studio is very big, very approximately three hundred and fifty people working right now. And, you know, it’s always this here and there, because, you know, when you read when you have when you read positive feedback, you’re like, oh, we’re hitting it; people are happy and stuff. Then we release another build and we get the feedback. You know, we’ve made it worse than it was.
And, you know, this is the moment when you start feeling that maybe you’re doing something wrong with this one. Yeah. But I think the major approach to that was persistence, because we understood that we had to iterate till the moment we will be getting good numbers on a massive scale from the audience.
And that’s the reason we were doing a lot of surveys with thousands of people participating all across the globe. And we were analyzing their feedback from version to version and seeing how positive reception through a number of features we were looking into was getting better and better and better. And so basically now we now as the game is already uploaded to the to the platform, so we’re not changing anything already.
I was recently talking to our Discord community also related to these issues, and we’ll just keep upgrading it. We’ll keep delivering new features, new modes. We’ll fix the bugs that will definitely appear on day one when all these people will log in because we have more than 2.5 million of wish lists on PS5 and Xbox series.
And this will be like a never ending process. I think currently the worry, the only one we have is is it sufficient, the thing we have right now, is it sufficient to retain the audience for a long time because we are not an annual product and we don’t need to sell it once like our competitors do.
What was the inspiration, if any, from competing games like EA Sports FC and Konami’s eFootball?
I think we obviously were inspired by both the games. And we have people inside the studio who are like fans of EA’s games or fans of Konami’s games.
And yet we really we really strive to compete, at some point, with EA, because when we are looking at the competition right now, we see that EA is just by far ahead in terms of audience and in the features and the content. And Konami’s game is stronger on mobile devices than on consoles. And we are currently targeting consoles.
So I’m pretty hopeful, let me put it this way, that we will become the number two brand on consoles fast. I think that will be the goal that we want to achieve at first and to build up upon that foundation further on. And besides the console version, we are we are already working on the PC version. Our PC Steam page is public and we will soon announce the approximate time frame of when it’s going to be released. And we’re also working on a mobile experience that will also going to be released. And when I’m speaking about the PC version, I also mean a Steam Deck version.
Yeah, so we play it on a handheld and some other platforms that are coming, actually. So we really want to become a household name in football gaming across the globe.
You have Cristiano Ronaldo as an ambassador for the game. How big was it to get the most famous player in the world to be on board with your game?
I think that’s one of the biggest milestones we’ve achieved before we released. Honestly, in my personal opinion, I’m a I’m a fan of Cristiano Ronaldo. I’ve been one since he moved from Sporting to Manchester.
He has been an inspiration for me when I was young, when I was playing. He has always been the guy whom I really loved. I loved his passion, the way he plays. I think he is just an example of sportsmanship. The best one you can have in football right now.
So it was not easy. The first deal we made, the ambassador deal, it took us I don’t remember exactly, but somewhere between nine months and 12 months, I think. We were pitching it to him and to his team. We had a number of talks we visited. And at some point in time, he just agreed. And I actually for some time did not did not believe it’s happening to us. So, when it happened and, we’ve been together for some time already, and we saw when we hit this moment, when we were going through another investment round with Strikerz. And so we just thought we have to offer this to him because, you know, there’s kind of a synergy in here and he might be interested.
And funnily enough, I think the investment part was even easier than this first deal we made, because when we were making this first deal, we’re nobody’s, an unknown brand, and some guys who just, you know, want to change the world in a way. So, I think it’s one of the biggest milestones for us. And I’m extremely satisfied and happy we’re together on this one.
Why make UFL Free-To-Play?
I think that, majorly, the reason is that, first of all, our team and me and many of us, we have been working a lot on free-to-play before. And we’ve seen how many other games in other genres switched to free-to-play models. You can go for MOBA games like League of Legends, for example, or you can go with action shooter games like Fortnite did.
And we just understood that this will make the exposure bigger and it would be easier to try us than, you know, just buying us and having to go through this paywall. And one of the points, which is, more like a philosophical one here and less business, is that we believe that football has to be accessible because, like in the street, you can play at any time.
And as there are models that can provide that digitally, why not do that? And so we try to devise a model that will allow that to happen. And we will very soon know how it will work out.
How do you find the fine line with monetization to avoid alienating the player base?
I think in the in regards to that, it’s quite easy because the competition we have, it is very aggressive to the audience. And everything you get, you get through a loot box mechanic, which is not the best, in my personal opinion, in relation to the fact that you need to get the players on your team.
And so it was very easy for us when we understood that if we just, at least, eliminate the entry barrier and we eliminate the idea that you have to buy loot boxes to get the players — you’re always frustrated because you cannot get exactly the guy you want. Like, I want to play with Cristiano Ronaldo. I don’t want to be rolling boxes until I get one or until I get so many other guys whom I did not need and sell all of them to get him.
It’s kind of a very weird way of doing stuff. We understand that, you know, there is market and there is business and these guys are doing it this way. It’s very successful for them.
But we understood that if we just even we just push these two out of the formula, it becomes much more pleasing for the audience. And the second part of that is that once we understood that we are doing this and we’re doing a free to play title, we understood that we won’t be having an annual restart every time, which will basically give you an opportunity to keep the stuff that you have acquired. And it’s not just the players. It’s also the vanity items and the brand collaborations that we are making.
Will there be items that you have to spend real money to get, or will you be able to grind to get everything?
Some things are going to be not available for the currency that you actually earn in the game. Some of the mechanics are pretty well known. For example, you can go for the battle pass mechanic where you have a free part of it and a paid version of it.
So we have that. Some vanity items, unique items, will be sold for hard currency only, which will not give you an advantage over your opponent.
So, all real-money purchases are cosmetic? There are no pay-to-win mechanics at all?
Yeah, vanity and cosmetic. We will have skins that you can buy for soft currency, you just have to grind for that. I’m sure that we will hit some obstacles, and maybe we will have to rework this or that, but the approach stays the same. We want the game to be very accessible.
It’s possible we will be adding stuff that will be available for for money. Maybe we’ll add an offline mode, like a career mode, which we’ll be just selling as a DLC to the basic UFL that you have for free. So basically, we’re trying to turn the thing around with the main mode being always accessible for you and additional modes that may be bought for money or appearing from time to time, trying to entertain the audience with different stuff, because currently, content is king, right?
On the field, is there anything that you feel UFL does really well that provides that true gameplay alternative?
I think that if you look at UFL from the gameplay perspective, it’s somewhere between the EA’s title and Konami’s title, because one of these games is in a way too arcade, and you kind of — I love how the animations work, and the tech the guys have, it’s really fantastic — but it’s somewhat, in a way, too unrealistic, I would say, because they just move their legs at a speed which, you know, you would break your legs if it was the real life.
And on the other side of this story, we have a game which is much slower, in a way, it takes time to receive the ball, to put it down, which is basically closer to real life, of course, but it is less applicable to online competition, where you have to be very reactive and stuff.
So, I think we’re somewhere in the middle, and this feeling you get from a game, and I think that’s exactly the thing with all these three games, you get a unique feeling playing it, and that’s a big achievement, though it’s hard to put it into words, okay, we have this type of dribbling, or we have these type of skill moves, or we have these type of fantastic crosses, or whatever it is.
How have you been able to navigate a potential worry of an oversaturated market and possible failure?
I think that we don’t yet know how successful will we be, right, because until you launch, you don’t know. I’ve been a part of Disney Interactive for a long time ago, and I’ve seen the movies being released, and like, you know, you take a movie like Pirates of the Caribbean, super successful title and stuff, and then you go for a different setting, which is basically a western, where you also get Johnny Depp, and all these great guys who can act fantastically and are loved by the people, and it flops.
So there’s always a certain element of risk to any product being released. But our approach was we need to give access to what we work on to the end users as early as possible, and then finalize and polish together with them, so that we minimize the risk that when everyone sees what we have developed, they just don’t feel it’s right.
We have been heavily dependent, working together with the community, analyzing their feedback, and trying to align our vision with the feedback we get from the audience. I think that’s the way we’re tackling that.
With UFL on PS5, Xbox Series, and, eventually, PC, will it support full cross-play for all platforms?
We are already cross-platform between Xbox and PlayStation. We’re not planning to add PC to the cross-play with consoles because of the cheaters, which exist, sadly. We are implementing a number of anti-cheat solutions into the game, but still we are kind of reluctant to do that because this has been happening to the other games and we’ve seen a lot of negative feedback from the audience.
So we believe that we’ll have like the console experience, the PC experience, and mobile experience as three separate experiences. But of course the PC experience will be closer to the consoles, it’s just that it will revolve inside of it.
Is there any worry of limiting or alienating the audience with that decision?
I think that will definitely depend on how many players we will have on PC because if the player base will be saturated enough then they won’t be feeling like they’re being abandoned. And as a product, we are a live service product, so we will be releasing a lot of content, features, mode, playing with all these things, and it will be relevant for all the platforms, including the PC.
We’ll not be forgetting it for years, you know, and making an annual update to it. It will be happening regularly, so we will be entertaining the audience that will be playing on PC at the same extent as we’re doing that on consoles.
Is online play a peer-to-peer connection or connection to dedicated servers?
We have both connections in the game, both the dedicated server and the peer-to-peer. We can play with these things and we have a separate team that’s operating it, so it will be changing from time to time. It’s about the cost efficiency, of course, because the dedicated servers cost a lot, but we do a lot of optimization non-stop.
I don’t know, maybe at some point in time this will be just the dedicated server. We will see how this will roll out.
With the release coming, what’s one thing you can say your most excited to see everybody get access to, and, maybe, one thing you’re nervous about?
Well, I would say we’re definitely a little bit nervous in general, just because of the fact that we’re releasing. But if you want my personal take, my personal take is that I would really love the team passes, which are basically battle pass mechanics, to be popular, because we’re doing something nobody is doing. We’re doing deep integrations with brands that will bring unique content that is relevant in the football culture with the biggest names you can find in football, ultimate verificators that you can have.
We’ll start with that on December 5th, so I will be very closely looking at how the team pass will be received by the audience, because we definitely have the team pass in our test version that are available to a limited amount of people, but the real team passes that are starting on December 5th, we have never shown this content to anyone, and nobody knows what this is going to be.
How do you find the balance of deciding what to work on from player feedback and what can be pushed off or not addressed?
I think that we have already mastered this one because we have been working on gathering the data throughout the tests we had throughout 2023 and 2024, and so now we have means of communicating and asking the audience on a massive scale. So, we look at just the big amount of data from all the people who are committing to it, saying this was good, this was good, this does not work good, and we measure it and we compare it and see whether there are like extremums to this which basically show that you have an issue in here, you have to look into it, and we analyze what’s wrong with us.
Sometimes we’ve had a number of situations when we thought that the feature is working right, but when we look at the data from these people, we see that there’s certainly something wrong there, and some of our devs and QAs go into it and dig into it, and ultimately find bugs or issues or some design flaws, and we’re facing that non-stop.
What is the overall feeling now that release is here?
It’s totally surreal because we have been on this road for eight years. Eight years ago, we were four people. If we are successful, I think we’ll be telling more stories about how this happened, what were the obstacles we had to tackle in the process.
It was a very, very complicated path, I would say. So, totally surreal.
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