Ring of Steel

How a small Sheffield indie was entrusted with the future of boxing videogames

Boxing is home to the one-on-one: that primordial, binary drama promising either total victory or abject loss. It’s a setup that favours the underdog, allowing them to tip the established order with a single knockout – or, if they can keep up the momentum, set win ratios that would leave Call Of Duty players dumbstruck. It’s a model Steel City Interactive has followed as only a real boxing aficionado could. In less than two years, the fledgling Sheffield company has built a roster of top-level licenses that take several scrolls down its official site to appreciate in full. After a decade of boxing game drought, the biggest names in the sport have lent their endorsements and likenesses to the innocuously named eSports Boxing Club, making it impossible to ignore. And it’s a feat that’s been achieved in the fashion of all the greats: one-on-one.

“Over the last 18 months we’ve been going and speaking individually to the agents, the managers, the boxers, to try and get them into the game,” studio head Ash Habib explains. “There were some hard obstacles that we had to cross to convince people that we’re in this for the long haul and we’re going to see this through.”

This is not how sports games are usually made. Typically, sports have central bodies that own and regulate the use of their licences, leading to partnerships with major publishers. EA, for instance, has long enjoyed sweeping deals that enable the use of famous names and faces in FIFA – to the growing frustration of footballers themselves, it has to be said. Get Zlatan Ibrahimovic started on Twitter and you’re unlikely to get him to stop.