The fight against EA Sports and their renewed College Football video game has hit a new height, as a lawsuit has been filed against the company.

Two weeks ago, the College Football Players Association urged players and schools to boycott the game, citing “ridiculously low” payouts for student-athletes. The net payout would reportedly come to $500 per athlete, regardless of skill and with no royalties.

Now, the battle has escalated to the legal frontier, as the Bandr Group announced they are suing EA Sports with a Tuesday court filing in northern California. Bandr has previous contracts with 54 schools to represent their NIL deals, before EA decided to go in a different direction with OneTeam Partners to circumvent the Bandr agreements.

OneTeam Partners is attempting to allow athletes to opt-in to the one time payment deal, that the players association and Bandr agree is an unfair proposition.

EA Sports College Football has been out of commission for the last decade, after a federal court ruled that the company could no longer produce the game without compensating the college athletes. Once the NIL era began over the last year and a half, the door was reopened for the game to return, the first since NCAA Football 2014.

The game was scheduled to be released in July 2023, but that timeline looks hazy now given all of the legal troubles and backlash. They will have to work with these competing companies to iron out the athlete compensation details if they ever want to deliver a product to the eager fans who have been patiently waiting.