Football simulation game UFL is a free-to-play rival to FIFA and eFootball

Strikerz Inc. has revealed a brand new free-to-play football game for consoles called UFL, and it looks like the game is taking a shot at FIFA and the series formally known as PES, eFootball.

Created on Unreal Engine, and boasting a platform that promises to connect football fans around the world, the new competitive title (which has already been in development for five years) seems to be a serious contender in the traditionally FIFA-dominated football gaming space.

You can check out the debut trailer below. A release date and platforms will be announced soon.

“The game will be available for free and we will regularly add new features and updates with no mandatory payments or yearly fees,” Strikerz Inc. said in a press release. “The game is designed to be a fair to play experience that implies a skill-first approach and zero pay-to-win options.”

To us, that reads like a dig at the current FIFA meta, heavily influenced by its reliacne on FUT and dodgy AI.

“We are football fans and passionate gamers — we have been playing football video games for years and we know exactly what people want to see in a football simulator,” says Eugene Nashilov, CEO at Strikerz Inc. “We want to reinvent football video gaming from the ground up, offering players around the world a revolutionary, exciting and fair to play experience.”

Self-described as “a revolutionary new global online football league,” UFL will launch with 5,000 licensed real-world players which you can recruit and poach in your own custom club.

The game will be kept up-to-date and relevant in a fantasy football kinda way via a partnership with sports performance analysis company InStat, which will “provide detailed data and up-to-date statistics for each player.”

To date, we’ve only seen the Hammers (that’s West Ham Utd.) stadium and kit in gameplay footage. Individual club and league licenses have yet to be disclosed.

It’s a good time to be a football fan, then: there’s an eFootball demo coming soon, FIFA 22 launches October 1, and now there’s UFL to get excited about, too.