A squad forming for a Battlefield 6 match. Two players teaming up in EA SPORTS FC™ 26. A message from a friend inviting you to jump into a game.
Across Electronic Arts titles, these moments are happening every day, and increasingly they’re powered by EA Connect.
That momentum is showing up in the numbers. EA Connect will soon hit 200 million total *friendships since it first launched with EA SPORTS FIFA 23, marking a major milestone for how players connect across EA’s global player network. Over the past year, nearly every major title saw more players forming meaningful connections. Franchises like EA SPORTS Madden NFL 26 more than doubled their friendship growth, with strong momentum across NHL and EA SPORTS FC™ as well. Much of this has been driven by features like Recently Met and Friend Recommendations, making it easier for players to find and connect with others like themselves.
But behind the numbers is something bigger to us, to our players, and to our fans: a growing community.
EA Connect is designed to help players meet, connect, and play together, whether they already know each other or are meeting for the first time in-game.
As EA’s games continue to grow and evolve, so do the ways players build friendships within them.
“What we're seeing in our live games, our long-lived games like FC and like Madden, is a huge proportion of those players are connecting through those experiences,” says Joe Traverso, Vice President of EA Experiences - Commerce, Social, and Subscription. “So we're actually introducing them to people they never otherwise would have met. They're now creating lasting connections.”
This evolution is happening across EA’s portfolio as EA Connect is introduced in new genres and franchises.
“One of the big ones was we brought EA Connect to shooters at EA for the first time,” says Traverso. “Battlefield 6 launching with EA Connect integration as a core part of that gameplay experience was an accelerant for that amazing early franchise engagement that we saw as players were squadding up to play Battlefield when it first launched.”
Players quickly embraced the experience, using the system to invite friends, form squads, and build new connections.
“There’s a latent demand for people to want to play cross-platform with their friends in the community of EA players,” Traverso adds.
As players spend more time in EA’s games, the nature of their connections is changing.
“Those players who are still in the games are looking for people like them to play with,” says Traverso. “And so they're really interested in creating these new types of friendships, where it's people they don't know, it's people that they met in a match.”
Those new friendships are becoming a powerful driver of engagement across EA’s games. In fact, EA Connect saw 10 million players create their very first EA friendship this year, a new milestone for the platform.
“Players are creating the connections that are going to help them build lasting relationships in and around our games,” Traverso says.
EA Connect isn’t just about what happens during a match; it’s about staying connected before and after players jump into a game. To support that, EA expanded the platform with a mobile experience that allows players to stay connected even when they’re not actively playing.
“That’s allowed us to help those players reach their friends when they're not online,” says Traverso. “So when someone goes online from my EA Connect list in Battlefield now, if we are friends, I get a push notification on my phone.”
That simple notification can spark a new play session.
“We create these really virtuous loops where players see their friends are online, they message each other using our innovative game-to-mobile Quick Messages feature, and then they jump in and play together once they have the opportunity to do that,” Traverso says.
For Peter Knudson, Director of Product on EA Connect, the progress EA Connect has made reflects years of work toward a larger vision.
“One is about what Joe was saying about community,” says Knudson. “Those 200 million friendships… what it really represents is the fact that our vision about creating community around our games is finally being met. This also represents that players are able to meet like-minded people in a safe way and stay in touch with them easily so that co-operative gameplay is seamless for them.”
Today, those connections extend well beyond a single game session.
"We built an integration with Discord that allows EA Connect users to link their Discord and EA accounts and have a unified player journey - including friends list, presence, and game invites - no matter where you play,” Knudson says. “More friends to play with across the EA franchises means more time in the game and more matches.”
At its core, the goal of EA Connect isn’t just to build another feature; it’s to create a more connected gaming experience for players everywhere.
“Our North Star is about creating a connected ecosystem for people who play games,” says Traverso. “If you can see that your friends are online, you can send a consistent invitation across those destinations, you've got a consistent and portable friends list that goes with you to all those destinations.”
The result is simple: wherever players choose to play, they can play together.
Check out other amazing EA stories on ea.com/news.
*Friendships reflect the total number of made and accepted friend invites on an EA game or service during the listed time period. Each accepted friend invite is counted for the player making the friend invitation and the player accepting it. We do not adjust for subsequent changes.