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FC Barcelona has renewed its partnership with Konami, making the Japanese developer the “official football video game partner of the Catalan club”.
The renewal means that the Spanish champions remain as one of the “core clubs” featured in Konami’s free-to-play football series, eFootball, which, of course, started life a long time ago as the premium football game, Pro Evolution Soccer (PES).
The formal partnership means Konami retains “multiple rights” with the football team, including “player access, media opportunities, and event exposure”. For players, this means you’ll be able to power up your Dream Team with three new Epic cards for the FC Barcelona legends Rivaldo, Patrick Kluivert, and Javier Saviola – you have until 17th August to claim them – and be able to play on the hallowed turf of the Camp Nou (even if the real players can’t right now).
While it’s unclear how long the companies have agreed to extend their partnership for, Konami European president, Naoki Morita, said that the publisher was “proud to have [Barcelona] as part of the eFootball series now and for the next few years”.
Back in March, Konami wanted you to know that its reimagined PES football game, eFootball 2023, had surpassed 600 million downloads globally across both PC, mobile, and console.
eFootball’s first season was disastrous and received an Avoid in our review. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, the game is still unable to compete with the recent success of FIFA 2023, which had the series’ largest-ever number of players at launch.
