THE WORLD CUP IS HERE AND I GOT THE FEVER BABY. IT’S A MONTH OF FOOTBALL WITH 64 MATCHES AND WHAT EVEN ARE VIDEO GAMES WHO CARES.

Electronic Arts takes a lot of shit from a lot of people for many of its business practices. So its decision to just give away a big FIFA 18 World Cup update—something they used to charge for—is a pleasant surprise.

In 2013, we were down to three active NHL players who had appeared in NHL 94, a video game released in 1993. It’s taken almost five more years, but we’re now finally down to zero.

“What does NE stand for?” my five-year-old son asked as we watched last night’s Super Bowl LI. I told him it stood for the New England Patriots. “No! Change it!” he shouted, lunging for the Xbox One controller. “It should be Atlanta versus Atlanta!” Oh right, Madden 17.

Following the tragic plane crash Monday night that took the lives of a majority of players from Brazilian first-division soccer team Chapecoense, EA offers FIFA 17 players a means to show their support via a free in-game badge and kit.

The makers of Madden NFL 17, the most realistic football game on Earth, have confirmed to Kotaku that their latest game puts the sun in the wrong part of the sky. During evening games in Los Angeles, the sun appears to set in the east, a problem that probably won’t be fixed until next year’s sequel, according to…

Welcome to the next generation, FIFA. What took you so long?

Iceland, whose fairy-tale trip to the business end of Euro 2016 was one of the tournament’s highlights, should be in this year’s edition of FIFA. But they’re not, following a dispute with EA over how much Iceland’s football association would be paid for the team’s rights.

Welcome to 2016, an age in which Nike and EA Sports collaborate on an actual pair of FIFA series football boots (soccer cleats, Americans).

Sometimes the annual installment of a sports game feels like a brand new experience, sometimes it feels like same thing, different year. NHL 17, available for play now on EA Access ahead of next week’s release, is definitely the latter.

FIFA fans, fed up with what they felt was a “handicap glitch” affecting their play, have diagnosed and likely uncovered a problem that may have been undermining the game’s “Ultimate Team” mode for years. Which is a big deal, since that mode costs real money.

And so a last-minute idea results in one of the best Kotaku ‘Shop Contests ever, with so many excellent entries there was no way I could pick one for the top. So I picked three.

It’s easy to sit here as a games writer or armchair pundit and rail against the practice of publishers asking for more money from gamers who have already spent $60 on a new title. But hey, turns out plenty of people love doing it (and are doing it), especially when it comes to EA Sports’ big games.

They call it the Madden Curse. Leading sports video game publisher EA puts an NFL star on the cover of its annual football franchise and then that star gets hurt or suffers some other bad fate. On Friday, EA announced Ronda Rousey as its cover athlete for its second UFC game. Whoops.

The King is dead. Long live the King.