Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

A couple of days ago, I was feeling rather weird. A part of my childhood had just ended, or rather, is about to end in a few months.

From 2023, the hugely popular FIFA football video game will no longer be called FIFA. That’s because FIFA, football’s international governing body, and game developer Electronic Arts have decided to end their nearly three-decade-long partnership.

The cracks in this relationship were first reported by the New York Times in October. I had written about it briefly back then in the second edition of Moneyball, when most gaming industry analysts believed it was probably a negotiation tactic. The most recent 10-year deal between the two parties, worth US$150 million a year, is ending in December 2022.

But not many expected them to actually call it quits. After all, why would you pull the plug on a relationship that’s resulted in a game that has generated more than US$20 billion in sales over the past two decades?

But according to the New York Times’ latest report on the matter, FIFA feels EA owes it a lot more in licensing fees—at least double the US$150 million a year it’s currently getting.