SPORTbible was invited out to play UFL before its official release and the highest-rated players on the game have emerged.

The list of UFL’s highest-rated players has emerged ahead of the game’s release, with the newest EAFC competitor now available for fans.

Back in December 2023, it was announced that Cristiano Ronaldo would be part of a group investing $40 million into a new video game named ‘UFL’ which is being developed by Strikerz Inc.

UFL will be available on release for free and has branded itself ‘fair to play’, meaning players will be able to build their dream football team through ‘grinding the game’.

There will be a new Open Beta testing weekend between August 2-4 with players getting the chance to play the latest version of the game prior to release.

SPORTbible were recently given the opportunity to play UFL at their official headquarters in Cyprus and it has to be said the game certainly has significant potential despite some notable issues.

UFL is the latest competitor title to rival EAFC. (UFL)

The gameplay was certainly fun, with passing in particular very smooth and far more manual than I expected, making completing a neat passage of play feel a lot more rewarding than other games.

However, there were some key issues with the current build of the game, with goalkeeper animations in particular rather inconsistent.

The highest-rated goalkeeper in the game, Alisson, often switched from being a complete superhuman to absolutely terrible, an aspect of the game they will have to balance on full release.

From a graphics perspective, the game also held up very well, looking far more similar to EAFC as opposed to eFootball, which felt like a real positive.

You can check out official gameplay footage of UFL below.

Speaking to CEO Eugene Nashilov at UFL HQ, we were able to glean plenty of information about the revolutionary player rating system used by UFL which developers of the game believe will give players a totally new playing experience.

With UFL being a free-to-play title, it will be a one-time download as opposed to EAFC which has a new release each season. Because of this, UFL have taken the bold step to update base player ratings consistently.

“The player ratings will be updated on a very regular basis, so they will always be live ratings,” Nashilov explained.

“Once a month we will be changing the parameters of all the players in the transfer market, for example, if you buy Kevin De Bruyne – after a month his parameters will change based on how he’s performed in real life.”

UFL claims to be using top-level tech in order to pull this off on such a consistent basis for every single player in the game.

“This analyses real player performance on the real-life pitches and we get the data from their pace, their passing, different types of passing, and more,” he said.

“We calculate their entire effectiveness on the pitch for the role they are in, we get these statistics and use our algorithm to transform them into player ratings.”

However, Nashilov revealed that this system doesn’t always get it right, and intervention is sometimes needed to ensure the most realistic ratings possible.

“Sometimes we have to interfere a bit manually because a player could have missed half a season so his parameters would automatically be poorer. For example, we couldn’t have De Bruyne rated 60,” he added.

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While this ‘live rating system’ will keep the game as fresh as possible, it could have a particularly negative effect on cover star Cristiano Ronaldo, who is currently rated as the joint-highest player on the game at 91.

Ronaldo is joined by Jude Bellingham, Erling Haaland, Kevin De Bruyne, Kylian Mbappe, Vini Jr and his long-standing rival Lionel Messi as the top players on the game.

“Nobody knows how long he will play, but it will be a natural thing that his rating does drop lower at some point,” Nashilov explained.

“We will see what he decides for his career, but for as long that he is playing there is a high probability he will be in our game no matter which league he goes to.”

With Ronaldo heading towards retirement, it was important to ask how the five-time Ballon d’Or winner would be incorporated into the game following his retirement – and the answer certainly didn’t disappoint.

Nashilov said with a smile: “Sometime later we are planning to add in legends and obviously he will be first on the list.”