eFootball’s journey from rock bottom

Konami’s football series of games is interesting. In the Balkans, it’s hard to find a single person who had a PlayStation 1, and did not own PES (the predecessor to eFootball, to all of you kids). PES was, and still is, a cultural icon here, but eFootball has struggled to reach the level of fame that its competitor, EA FC or FIFA, as we still call it, has. So let’s talk PES, eFootball, and all in between.

eFootball was born in 2021 as a successor to the acclaimed Pro Evolution Soccer (PES) series of games, which first launched in 1995. On launch, the game was terrible and universally hated for almost every feature, ranging from graphics to its newly introduced free-to-play model. Critics noted that it was “unplayable” and outright laughed at its sub-par graphics and overall presentation. Its Steam page had more than 11,000 reviews posted, and just 9% of them were positive. The launch was called the worst in history, and eFootball is still struggling to bounce back – its Steam reviews are now “mixed”, which is a significant improvement.

The only thing they did not criticise all that much was the actual gameplay, which, in traditional PES fashion, remained slower, more technical and complex than FIFA. Still, with everything else against it, that was just a silver lining.

With FIFA and later EA FC having a yearly release cycle that requires players to buy the game each year, eFootball’s creators decided on a different idea: making it free to play with yearly updates so that players don’t have to pay money to get the game. This starkly contrasts with EA FC, a game that needs to be bought, yet has layers upon layers of microtransactions. eFootball still has these microtransactions, but with the base being free, it’s an easier pill to stomach. 

Today, eFootball is still struggling financially, but it is a very interesting saga of trying to reinvent a franchise by making it something completely different. The free-to-play model is working well, but with Konami being a smaller developer than EA, there’s simply no competition here. 

When it comes to esports, the game is still well-loved by professional players; some even play both EA FC and eFootball professionally. It’s a more realistic approach, which makes it more rewarding, but again, the fewer tournaments make it more of a niche title than a real contender for the number one spot in football games. EA’s machinery is simply too strong for many of its contenders, even if they only successfully force customers to pay for features that should’ve been in the game for free. In 2025, Konami made moves to invest more into regional leagues for eFootball, which might prove to be a very good thing, but one that we’ll see the effects of later. 

All in all, eFootball is a Balkans icon still, and with almost 100 players in each qualifier for the A1 Adria League weekly tournaments it definitely has a lot going for it in the region. 

Make sure you watch the playoffs this weekend!