FIFA Interactive World Cup scores own goal, renames itself to eWorld Cup

EA has announced that it’s renaming the FIFA Interactive World Cup to the FIFA eWorld Cup for 2018.

While they’ve taken a recognisable and interesting name and turned it something wholly more unfortunate, with a new name comes a new format and that’s also been revealed. For 2018, qualifying will occur through a series of global series qualifiers taking place throughout the year, with a last chance weekend taking place in May 2018.

Last year’s FIFA Interactive World Cup was a successful event, and one of the few major esports events to be won by the U.K, as Unilad player Spencer ‘Gorilla’ Ealing lifted the trophy.

The new format is exciting and as you can see from the organisational chart below, there’s a lot of different paths to the final,

To summarise, it looks a bit like this for the Road to the FIFA eWorld Cup 2018: 

• Stage 1: Players qualify by participating in a series of online and/or live events, including the FUT Champions Cups, FIFA eClub World Cup, Licensed Qualifying Competitions and Official League Partner Qualifying Competitions (i.e. players compete as their favorite real-world club)
• Stage 2: The top 128 (64 PS4 and 64 Xbox One) players will compete in Playoff events, ending when 32 of the best competitors remain
• Stage 3: The top 32 players make it through to the FIFA eWorld Cup Grand Final

Meanwhile the eWorld branding is getting little but derision from the world esports.