A new player has entered the game.
UFL is an upcoming football simulation video game developed and published by a new Belarusian studio called Strikerz Inc, and if you need some incentive to give the new sports game a try when it launches – well, knowing that it will be free to play should do the trick.
A potential rival to FIFA and the recently renamed eFootball (you will likely know that by the name of PES), UFL will be released on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X with more homes for it potentially opening up in the future.
But what is UFL and how will it stand apart from the other footballing sims you can play? Here is all we know so far.
What does UFL stand for?
UFL stands for Ultimate Football League. Oddly, this wording wasn’t actually included in the game’s launch trailer, but it was a very common guess among the people that were watching.
UFL release date
Status: unknown. We only know the smallest details about UFL so far and have only seen the smallest amount of gameplay so a release date still eludes us. Given what we know though, we do not expect to see the full game released until late next year but it is likely beta testing will be on the way and we will be keeping a keen eye out for any details on that.
We have received a great deal of positive feedback on our cinematic teaser, thanks so much to all of you!
— UFL (@UFLgame) August 26, 2021
With regards to the platforms, we’re primarily focused on bringing UFL to @PlayStation and @Xbox but PC is also a platform that we’re closely considering ????
Stay tuned???? pic.twitter.com/KYlWjLQHWv
UFL gameplay
The official press release announcement for UFL describes the gameplay experience like so: “In UFL, players will be able to create their own football clubs made up of more than 5000 licensed footballers and compete with other gamers worldwide to prove their skills and climb to the very top of the league”.
Speaking to IGN, Strikerz CEO Eugene Nashilov added this: “you will manage your club, form a roster, develop tactics and compete with other gamers in seasons to prove your skills and climb to the very top of the league. Competitive, fair gaming is at the very core of UFL’s gameplay. In this competition, your victory depends solely on your gaming skills and the choices you make.”
UFL licences
UFL will get player likenesses and licenses from FIFPro which means they should be able to get access to 65,000 professional players from all over the world! This is what EA uses for FIFA which is a good sign of how many players UFL could have. That being said, it is commonly thought that EA still has exclusive rights so time will tell how many they will actually end up with.
As for clubs, they have partnered with two that we know of. One is West Ham United and the other is Hashtag United, who you may have heard of if you watched Love Island this year (as they had one of the players in the villa for the 2021 series).
UFL trailer
There is but you should be warned that it is so short that it will be over before you even realise you have started watching it!
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