Netflix subscribers get a free FIFA World Cup game

Netflix FIFA World Cup screenshot — (Image credit: Netflix)

Suffering from a spot of World Cup fever? Netflix now offers a way to keep it stoked, with a new football game for subscribers, FIFA World Cup.

It’s not played directly on your phone but on your TV, and is a surprisingly full-on game of footie.

You directly control players, similar to one of the classic console football games, in FIFA World Cup. And you do so using your phone as a virtual gamepad.

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We’ve given it a quick go. You swipe with your right thumb to determine the force and style of your passes, and control player movement with a virtual left thumb stick.

Add full 3D visuals and FIFA World Cup starts to look and feel a bit like a simplified version of EA’s Sports FC — a series previously known as FIFA before EA lost the license.

You can play solo, or up to four people can get involved, each using their phone as a makeshift gamepad.

Is it a match for a AAA console game? Not quite, but it is labelled “Launch Edition” and there are plans to build the game up and make it richer and more rewarding. Netflix obviously wanted it out there as early in the World Cup season as possible.

“As the tournament progresses and the FIFA World Cup: Launch Edition community grows, Netflix will lay on depth, complexity, and technical refinements to updated versions,” says Netflix.

It’s worth a go if you don’t have a PC or console capable of playing the usual football gaming suspects — and we imagine there are plenty of those about given how much gaming hardware costs these days. At £569, a standard PlayStation 5 console costs £120 more than it did six years ago.

“We want to bring football back to its roots with something everyone can play with just the touch of a button,” says Alain Tascan, Netflix’s President of Games.

If you prefer the management side of football, Netflix subscribers can also play Football Manager 26 Mobile as part of their subscription.

Netflix’s FIFA World Cup is developed by Delphi Interactive, which also worked on the banging James Bond game 007 First Light, alongside IO Interactive.

Other Netflix games worth checking out include cinematic masterpiece Red Dead Redemption and the super-addictive Bloons TD 6, a tower defence title.

Netflix games are available to all tiers of subscriber, starting at the £5.99 ad-supported membership.

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Andrew Williams has written about all sorts of stuff for more than a decade — from tech and fitness to entertainment and fashion. He has written for a stack of magazines and websites including Wired, TrustedReviews, TechRadar and Stuff, enjoys going to gigs and painting in his spare time. He's also suspiciously good at poker.