Pretty sure nobody is buying FUT cards from previous years once they've moved on to the latest game. Plenty of (mad) people buy old Panini stickers.

...

Dutch courts issue EA with €10 million fine over failure to remove illegal loot boxes

Gave up without about a third to go.
Laughable deflection in the answers.

It's particularly galling when literally the next day they released a Cristiano Ronaldo "Player Of The Month" squad building challenge that required twenty-six squads to be turned in to get him. In laymans terms, it requires players to a cumulative value of 2.3 million coins. In October. Two weeks after the game is released. There is simply no way you'll have the coins or the players to do it unless you're either a major trader, or a major fifa points buyer, or both. Even the big streamers couldn't afford it.

Ultimate Team is a fucking blight on this whole hobby and every EA exec who contributed can go dive off a fucking 500ft cliff without a parachute. I've posted my own experience with it previously, but its on a par with fruit machines and any other form of gambling. Hideous, disgusting piece of shit thing. Likewise every big streamer and youtuber who contribute (bateson, castro et all. hideous human beings).

First time in a while I've seen this get media coverage...

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/04/its-rotting-young-peoples-brains-the-murky-world-of-gambling-in-video-games

Another day another shameless treatment of its community from the devs for EA FC (formerly Fifa).


In years gone past, at different points of the ultimate team cycle, you get some free loyalty packs. They'd look at the amount of days you've logged in since launch, and dole out rewards based on how many days you logged. Like so:


See? Pretty simple stuff.

Fast forward to this week, and the store within the game out of nowhere (it appeared during the night and not the usual 6pm gmt time that all daily content comes on at) had a new section called "Packs For You". These are literally described as loyalty packs for logging in so many times, but here's the kicker: in order to get them all, you can/have to pay money.

Now, you can of course use the currency of coins to buy them, but you can also load up Points via mtx purchases to get them too.

So for the avoidance of doubt, here's a PEGI 3 rated game offering previously free packs for a fee, and these packs like all the others are just glorified roulettes. The "for you" bit also makes you feel like it is for you, something special. Nope. Everyone's getting the same rewards, and there seems to be only two login thresholds. Ten days and thirty days. Oh wow, ea, you're really spoiling us.


I know what they're doing here. Andrew Wilson, the cyborg cunt, will enjoy himself at whatever event they put on in place of E3 telling us all that EA FC has been a smash hit, earned more, had more engagement, more BOOKINGS, all that shite, just to get it up fifa. Hey shareholders, mind that time yous were all scared us not having the fifa licence would hurt our bottom line? Aha, well think again.

This is all after a massive explosion of EA offering mental untradeable promo packs for months now. Why let people have RTG's and trade their way to success when you can put a £40 pack in the store that "guarantees" special/promo cards? Everyone having untradeable club stock means the tradeable ones are more desirable, but also the overall pack weight is so thin, even getting them is like finding a unicorn. So that means the transfer market is fucked and all that's left is pay pay pay.


In previous years, it was possible to grind/trade/play well to get rewarded and have an account that has zero spend on it, but still have a super competitive team, and not feel like you're missing out. Now that's near enough impossible. Pay To Win.

Sigh. The only glimmer of hope is the two new upstarts, Goals and UFL, are almost at the point where they're gonna be doing public testing. They'll most likely be utter pap to begin with but if someone can provide fair and consistent gameplay, and a sense of actual accomplishment, then I'll take a look.

Yeah, if fifa had any brains they'd hit them up. But I did read that because their recent offshoots from their main NBA/PGA staple (that lego Drive one, the kids wrasslin one) did terribly, they're thinking twice.

Genuinely see nothing changing with EA until the main pros/youtube folk make a stand and start boycotting it on given days. A campaign. A hash tag, even.

Hmph.

afgavinstan wrote:

Yeah, if fifa had any brains they'd hit them up. But I did read that because their recent offshoots from their main NBA/PGA staple (that lego Drive one, the kids wrasslin one) did terribly, they're thinking twice.

Genuinely see nothing changing with EA until the main pros/youtube folk make a stand and start boycotting it on given days. A campaign. A hash tag, even.

Hmph.

Or just don't buy FC25

Absolutely no need to justify it, but there's obviously an element of the whole experience that makes you miserable. I guess if the other bits you've mentioned outweigh the shite, go for it.

I stopped buying FIFA games maybe 7 years ago not because of the game itself being bad, but that they were (obviously) putting it all into Ultimate Team which has never interested me, to the detriment of the rest of the game.

I'm the guy who likes the FIFA narrative mode with cutscenes.

Those narrative bits always reminds me of the old PS1 Smackdown games and their storylines so I half expect the player character to get put through the manager's desk in a heel turn betrayal moment.

I presume the FIFA licence cost is astronomical and loot boxes / card packs etc are the only way to make the games financially viable.

It does allow EA to commission the likes of Wild Hearts and Immortals of Aveum though.