In talking about big ant’s first try at a rugby union game, I think they have done well. And they continue to give good patches over time.its like they’ve almost fixed gameplay in rugby’s basic form, which is a good foundation for next rugby game, once fixed.
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I hope they do not make another rugby game. Rugby 25 is not even a finished game and never looked like it was going to make sense imo. It just isn’t rugby.
BA should stick to league I reckon, which they are not bad at.
UNLESS R27 was completely different to R25. Then sure why not. Have another go.
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This.
2 years post early access an we still have something that is miles away from accurately depicting rugby union.
I guess at this stage with the next rwc a year away it would be too late for another publisher to consider releasing a game, so itll likely be a BA game in 27.
Hopefully they leave well alone after that
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When u look at the progression in AFL games and rl26. I think BA could potentially release something good. I mean they have a year to work on it and they have now made a couple of rugby games so should hopefully know what to do now 
It boggles my mind in 2026 we still dont have a Rugby game that can touch JonahLomu or Rugby 08, having Rigby 25 have some licenses and RC having the other ones sux sort of like how Fifa has most and PES had the others why can 1 just not have all the licenses.
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BigAnt needs to drop the expensive official licenses and put 100% of their budget into gameplay, physics, and AI. If they build a rock-solid, fully customizable base game, the community can use the Academy to recreate any real-world league or player anyway—especially now that AI tools can make asset creation so easy. If they just open up the PC version to proper, deep modding, the community will handle the realism. We’d basically get a fully licensed experience, and Big Ant could focus entirely on making the best playing sports game on the market.
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Licensing is quite important tbf. One of the big reasons this game is half enjoyable.
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Aren’t you from the Rugby Discord channel? Don’t you work for BigAnt lol 
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To you maybe.
Without enjoyable gameplay its all for nothing i dont care about facescans licensed kits etc because the gameplay itself is so poor
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Well play rugby challenge then. Gameplay is obviously number 1 priority. But there not going to drop licensing are they. Cause that means all game modes will be crap like career mode and means pro teams wont be a thing.
Why would all game modes be bad? I’m sure other older gamers remember sports games that allowed you to modify all of the teams and players…kits, logos, etc. Those could all be used in a career mode or other game modes. Sure it would mean no pro teams, but that game mode divides opinions.
Another perk is that if users could update the rosters, kits and logos themselves, we shouldn’t have people asking about those updates over and over again. 
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Right. But I would rather have player photography and real kits for every team in the game then somebody on a community page who’s only gonna make a couple of kits. And it would ruin career mode because the point of it is to sign players and develop players whislt taking a team to win win trophies. Using random unlicensed players just isnt fun. I mean why would you purposely want the game to not have licencing 
. It wont make any significant difference to gp lol.
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Yeah, we aren’t talking about the same thing. I’m not referring to this game not having licenses. In the older sports games I’m referring to it wasn’t a community where you download one team or player individually. You could get an entire mod with everything done and use that for all game modes. I think anyone on the “gameplay first” side would want something similar. Something like that for rugby with much better game play and all of the teams modded by a separate group of modders could be really nice.
Anyway, I am hopeful like you that the next installment of this game makes massive improvements like it sounds like other BA games have. That is probably more likely than the hypothetical scenario of a game with great gameplay and modding capabilities to make it look like licensed teams.
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In Rugby 25 the lcenses make every game mode poor when you can’t change squads etc.
the end.
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Why would i play rugby challenge ?
Another terrible rugby game.
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Well the gameplay is decent and it has no licensing? Thats what u asked for from this game?
Kelvin > Cyberleek, but quand leaks from Kelvin?
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- The gameplay isnt decent, imo its another on the long list of awful rugby games.
- I did not ask for no licenses, i said theyre not important if the gameplay is subpar. Licenses are a welcome addition providing the gameplay itself is good.
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Yep, that’s the biggest issue with licensing these days. It wasn’t much of a problem in the past.
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I don’t think either of you will agree with each other’s opinions here. Both have different needs for a game.
For me, I am more into gameplay than licences. But why can’t we not have both! R25 is already dead for me, teams are all outdated so licences haven’t worked (as OG said - if we had full freedom to move players, I may still pick it up time-to-time). But with both licences and gameplay being an issue, it proves little incentive to play at the moment.
I hope BA still have a crack at next title as we have 0 other options. Hope they have learnt a lot and able to have an updated engine (which sounded like part of the original issue) to be able to do what they want to do in the game.
Unfortunately, “hope” is the key word here. Been hoping a long time now, I played Jonah Lomu rugby back in the day and still waiting on a recent/decent game like most.
Grip socks coming.
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