[The NCAA, which hosts the highest level of college sports and generates more than $1 billion in annual sales, has settled on a deal to pay college athletes. The deal is a huge win for the student athletes, who have been breaking their bodies for free, but it also means a lot to publisher EA, which can finally get back to making college football games.

EA's first college football game in over a decade, now called simply EA Sports College Football 25, is already one of the biggest games of the year. During CF25's Early Access period last week, during which you had to pre-order a $100 edition to play, players noticed that more than 600,000 people were online at once. Even before its official release, College Football 25 was hitting numbers similar to Helldivers 2 and Baldur's Gate 3.

Unfortunately, the PC version of “College Football 25” is nowhere to be found. As far as we know, EA is not making a PC version this time, and it is not clear why.

The snub of a PC version is somewhat surprising, but not unbelievable given EA's track record. Madden and PC have not always worked well together: EA completely stopped supporting Windows from 2008 to 2017, finally returning to PC in 2018. And up until last year's Madden 24, the series had gotten into the habit of releasing a previous-gen version of the game on PC every year. These versions were developed by EA specifically for the previous generation consoles and often lacked the new features introduced that year, and the decision to make them the only versions on PC understandably gave fans the impression that we were an afterthought for EA.

“Madden 24 PC” broke the chain, and “Madden 25 PC” will be released next month.

Some fans have inferred that EA moved away from the PC version because of the possibility of CF25 being modded with unauthorized content after the player portrait rights debacle, but there is no evidence from EA to support such an inference.

Another possible explanation is simple: EA's football games do not sell well on PC: the Steam version of “Madden 24” is rated “Mixed” with less than 7,000 user reviews; EA's soccer game “FC 24” (formerly FIFA) Steam has 77,000 reviews.

It is true that both Madden and NCAA have always been considered console series. People who play soccer games around me more or less fit the stereotype of the console gamer who only buys sports games and “Call of Duty. At the risk of making a false connection between the “Football Brothers” and console gamers, maybe there is a way of thinking that football fans want to enjoy soccer on the most accessible and affordable box (console game console) and not much more than that It may be that they are not thinking much more than that.

It's no coincidence: EA's soccer games have always been designed with the controller in mind and have been sold more to console owners with Sony and Microsoft as marketing partners. If it was impossible to make a PC version of College Football 25, it is EA's fault for not prioritizing PC users. To be fair, this is not only EA's fault. Sony's baseball game MLB The Show has yet to make the transition to the PC version, despite being released on Xbox several years ago.

Fifteen years ago, or even a decade ago, going all-in on consoles was not an odd move, but now it is quite rare. What you may not know is that PC gaming is now mainstream. A large part of the audience for “Call of Duty” and “Fornite” plays on PC. Hell Diver 2” sold better on PC than on PS5. Also, as mentioned, EA franchise games sell very well on Steam. In this age of games everywhere, “Madden” may be the most “console” non-Nintendo game console series ever made.

Some fans are still hoping that EA will randomly announce a late release of “College Football 25” on Steam. It's possible, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

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