Today, remote-first triple-A game development studio GOALS announced it had secured twenty million dollars in Series A funding for its upcoming debut title, a free-to-play cross-play football game for PC and consoles.
Headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, GOALS was founded two years ago by ex Counter Strike World Champion Andreas Thorstensson, who has since gathered a total of $39 million in funding and recruited over 50 veteran developers that previously worked on games like FIFA, Battlefield, Madden, and other triple-A franchises. The studio seeks to expand up to 75 developers to accelerate the production of the game, which aims at revolutionizing the genre with fast and smooth gameplay rather than focusing on realism. Unsurprisingly, multiplayer and eSports have been a priority from the start.
GOALS is about how football feels rather than how it looks when others play it on TV. We want to give you the feeling of YOU winning. But how you win is up to you. This game is bigger than just the football field.
Football is more fun with others, and so is GOALS. We're building everything around easy-access multiplayer. Push start and you’re ready to go.
GOALS is a true multiplayer esports game. The code is built from scratch. We want to ensure a fluid online experience with minimal lag, latency, or button delay.
A good AI is there but never noticed. We use it as a helping hand, but that’s it. You and your fellow human beings do the heavy lifting in GOALS.
GOALS is for everyone, so we’re placing servers all over the world. Not just where most players live. Gameplay is always prioritized before graphics, so the game should run smoothly on any half-decent connection.
The developers have confirmed regular matches for up to 2v2 (versus or co-op) players as well as a separate 5v5 mode where each player is controlled by a real user. GOALS is currently in Pre-Alpha playtesting, so it is likely to be quite a way off the release date, but you can register to join the testing phases here.
This is only one of several football games bound to shake the stale market. Electronic Arts abandoned the FIFA brand to develop its own EA SPORTS FC, while FIFA is seeking a developer to make a new iteration of the officially licensed game. There's always Konami working on eFootball, and we also have a more direct competitor to GOALS with UFL; this free-to-play game should be released later this year, according to a tweet published today by the game's official account.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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