Among some impressive demos for Need for Speed: Most Wanted and Medal of Honor: Warfighter, the big surprise out of Electronic Arts’ E3 media briefing was word that it has acquired the rights to make games using the UFC license. What makes this surprising is the fact that THQ had the rights locked up for a long time to come — it and UFC owner Zuffa, LLC announced in October 2010 that they had extended their licensing agreement through 2018.
UFC president Dana White appeared on stage during the briefing to talk up the news and share his excitement about being partnered with EA — a strange sight to behold given his previous statements regarding the publisher. White claimed in 2009 that EA had previously dismissed mixed martial arts as not being a “real sport” and it allegedly showed no interest in developing an MMA game. When the company announced EA Sports MMA, White was furious that EA Sports was suddenly interested in the genre after seeing THQ’s success with UFC 2009 Undisputed. “I’m not tap-dancing around this thing or whatever,” he said at the time. “I’m telling you straight-up, I’m at war with [EA] right now. That’s how I look at it.” He also added, “EA doesn’t give a [expletive] about mixed martial arts. They made that very clear,” and threatened to blacklist fighters from the UFC — the world’s largest MMA promotion — who appeared in EA’s game. He later backed off this threat, as he is known to do.
