EA is no stranger to pulling the plug on games that aren’t successful, and this time, it’s one that barely even had a decent chance to begin with. EA Sports FC Empires, a mobile strategy spin-off of the EA FC franchise, is now completely shuttered. The game was previously available on Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store, but on November 30, EA completely pulled the plug on it and removed it from the platforms.
It’s not surprising that EA is shutting down a game, but how quickly this one has been scrapped. FC Empires launched in late 2024 in limited regions, and it never got a proper global rollout or a heavy marketing campaign. It was meant to rival the mobile version of Football Manager, but that never really panned out for this game.
Another One Bites The Dust
So, why is this game shutting down? The usual reasons: low interest and disappointing revenue numbers. According to AppMagik, downloads for the game were less than 100,000 for the past 30 days, and lifetime revenue was just over $1 million. Those numbers don’t mean much without context, but here’s a tidbit that puts things into perspective: AppMagik shows that Football Manager Mobile (the Netflix exclusive) has had over 10 million downloads since launch (November 4th) and has already generated $1 million in revenue just a month after its launch.
FC Empires, with its limited release and marketing, was never going to compete with that. The shutdown is part of a wider trend of EA aggressively discontinuing underperforming games. This year alone, they shut down online services for Dirt 3, Grid Autosport, Grid 2, and Dirt Shutdown. Granted, all of those are older games, and EA doesn’t like maintaining servers for games that don’t have many concurrent players. It’s a shame, but that’s just how big publishers operate now.
Unlike classic football sims or Ultimate Team-style gameplay, EA Sports FC Empires attempted turn-based tactical football. You were able to manage squads with real football stars and make strategic decisions on the pitch instead of playing matches in real time. The concept wasn’t necessarily novel.
Players managed squads of real football stars such as Jude Bellingham, Virgil van Dijk, and Son Heung-min, and made strategic decisions on the pitch instead of playing matches in real time. The concept wasn’t particularly novel, and Football Manager does this better, so EA’s game never quite found a dedicated audience.
