Following a controversial reward switch, EA Sports FC 24 players are threatening to boycott buying FC points
"You have a voice, this community has a voice."
A recent change to how EA Sports FC 24 is distributing some Champions Player Pick rewards hasn't gone down well with a lot of Ultimate Team players. The backlash to the tweak EA made over the weekend has seen folks accuse the developer of deliberately making it harder for them to acquire a couple of new Team of the Season cards, with some even announcing their intention to boycott buying FC points.
The cards at the centre of this fracas are the Ligue 1 TOTS versions of PSG stars Kylian Mbappe and Ousmane Dembele, with players reporting that they'd been earning more very good items like those two by playing through the game's most recent weekend league than is normally the case.
After a lot of folks had blazed through to earn these plum rewards (thanks VGC), EA tweeted that it had tweaked an issue with them, posting: "We have identified an issue where the Champions Player Pick rewards were providing unintended results. This has been corrected in-game."
A community note, which reads: “There may have been a probability issue, but there is no evidence of “unintended rewards” being given out. Mbappe and Dembele are part of Ligue 1 TOTS, so they fit the reward description. EA lowered their chance because it will force players to open packs with real currency," has since been added to the post.
The change has kicked off a bit of a movement among some EA FC streamers and fans on social media, with many calling for or declaring their intention to particpate in a boycott of either playing the game or buying FC points - the game's microtransaction currency that can be bought using real money. While the reward switch looks to have been the straw that's broken the camel's back for these people, it also looks to be getting lumped in with a lot of long-term frustrations about the state of the game or series that they've been harbouring.
"This company simply can't do things right, with issues week after week just piling up with no repurcussions. The servers are s**t, with inconsistent gameplay across different game modes, and lag compensation to players with bad internet, when it should actually be the other way round," one player wrote in a post on the game's subreddit.
"But nothing changes, no matter what we do, no matter how much we complain," they added, "All this after it was just reported that [EA] made billions in Ultimate Team alone. So what can we, as players, be able to do about this situation. I say we hit them where it hurts them the most. IT'S TIME TO BOYCOTT FIFA POINTS."
"Remember what happened with Battlefront and think about what is going on with Helldivers 2 at the moment," another player wrote in a different post, "You have a voice, this community has a voice, there are one million members here on this subreddit, boycott FC points please!"
VG247 has reached out to EA for comment on the situation.
If you're planning to keep playing FC 24, here's our really handy live TOTS tracker, which we regularly update to help you stay abreast of exactly how close each player is to earning an upgrade.