In the past couple of weeks the NFL has seen one of its biggest franchises, the team formerly known as the Washington Redskins, announced that it will be changing its team name and logo due to the racist connotations of its old name. A new name for the Washington team has yet to be decided and that change will be reflected in Madden NFL 21. In a statement to USGamer, EA confirmed that it would be altering Washington’s name in a title update for Madden NFL 21 when it releases.
“We are pleased to see Washington’s decision to change their team name and visual identity. We are quickly working to update Madden NFL 21 to feature a generic Washington team, while we await final word on the updated team name and logo design.”
The update will also remove and change commentary when referring to the Washington team, audio changes, stadium changes, and how the crowd looks. EA does state that not every reference will be caught before launch or during the first update but subsequent updates will remove links to the former team name.
This is not the first time EA has had to change the name and references of a team in one of its sports games. Last year, EA lost the license for Juventus with Konami’s eFootball PES 2020 getting full rights to the team. This meant that in FIFA 20 Juventus was renamed Piemonte Calcio.
In our review for Madden 20, Dom wrote:
