People are actually starting to enjoy it now.
Konami sports ball title eFootball 2022 may be on its way to a comeback story. Last September Konami released eFootball 2022, a free to play soccer game and a rebranding of eFootball Pro Evolution Soccer from prior iterations. Released on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation, the title was deeply panned at launch and made its way to many worst of 2021 lists from gaming press and YouTubers alike.
On April 14 Konami released version 1.0 of eFootball 2022 bringing with it a whole host of bugfixes, tweaks, and a complete overhaul of various systems. Foremost, Konami has overhauled and improved player and ball handling, added a new Dream Team mode, brought in more licenses, and just patched up a lot of the bugs. Even better, Konami instituted real faces into eFootball, meaning people look more like humans and less like eldritch abominations wearing human skin suits.
Just check out the video below for a side-by-side comparison.
And the results from the community have been incredibly positive so far. While eFootball 2022 launched to a dismal 8% approval rating on Steam, recent reviews for the last 30 days put the game at a 50% positive score. If you filter review scores down to just since the April 14 update, they amount to a slightly higher 58% approval rating. Much higher than the initial 8% and certainly higher than the current overall score of 18%.
With a massive 31,000 reviews already listed on eFootball 2022’s Steam page, not to mention the months of terrible public relations, Konami has a steep hill to climb in getting the game back into good graces. But it does seem that people are willing to come back and give it another shot. Traffic numbers on Steam have absolutely blown up since the update, as you can see from the chart below.
eFootball 2022’s performance went from averaging upwards of a thousand concurrent users to peaking at over twelve thousand players on April 21. The numbers heavily vary depending on the time of day, but the numbers are far better than they were not even two weeks ago.
What does the rest of the year look like for eFootball 2022? We’ll have to find out together. It does show that the window of opportunity has not closed for Konami or those who want to see the game succeed on its potential merits. If they build it, people will come.
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