Rugby League 26 – the NRL’s epic gaming fail

The NRL is never short of a drama or controversy off the field are they, but this one they didn’t see coming. The just released Rugby League 26 computer game appears to be an epic fail by 2025 gaming standards and it’s hard not to look on and laugh.

The NRL Boss Andrew Abdo was bouyant earlier this year when he dropped the bombshell that a new game was in the works while appearing on the Hello Sport podcast. He said “I love games, I’m a big believer in gamification as a way of connecting with and winning new fans..”

So if we’re trying to win new fans for the sport, the game has to represent the sport well right?

Abdo also said “It will be much more online, and much more contemporary”. Sadly, the games launch this week has been an epic fail.

Firstly if you stumped up the $99.95 cost on Xbox, you were not even able to play the game at launch. It took almost a whole day for the problem to be resolved and for Xbox players to be able to join in.

Secondly, for a $99.95 game, it’s graphics and performance are not on par with similarly priced sports games in market.

Some fans are quick to defend the local Aussie developers, rightly – given they don’t have the budgets of the EA sports of the world.

But when it comes to gameplay, many are concerned this is just a reskin of the eight year old previously released Rugby League game.

And if you’re scrolling TikTok, you’ll find plenty of examples of poor gameplay experience, fundamentals of the game just not right.

Of course, there will be gameplay updates, but surely this isn’t a minimal viable product for release – take a tip from Rockstar games, if GTAVI can be delayed year after year, you gotta do the same for this kind of release.

And yeah, I want my money back.