Gaurav* wakes up at 4am on Saturdays and Sundays. His routine is the same each time. He quickly turns off his alarm. He slowly shuffles out of bed, keeping the light off to avoid waking his wife and his 18-month-old son. He goes out through the bedroom door, and along the hall, to his office. He sits back in his chair, and he gets high.
In the last nine months, Gaurav has spent £2,000 on his secret addiction. He admits to a total spend over eight years of more than double that. That is, £4,250 is the amount he admits to when talking to me – he’s never told his family. But Gaurav isn’t addicted to drugs, or alcohol or even online poker. The reason Gaurav only gets a few hours of sleep each weekend, is because he can’t stop playing FIFA Ultimate Team.
]]>An official deep dive video has confirmed that FIFA 23's Ultimate Team will not get a dedicated World Cup mode during the tournament, which begins on November 20th. Starting with Season 2 on November 11th though, the international football competition is being represented in FUT with plenty of seasonal gubbins instead. The World Cup is, of course, also coming to the main game from November 9th in single-player and online Tournament mode. You can watch the FIFA 23 World Cup deep dive video below.
]]>EA have admitted there may be some truth to allegations that an employee used insider access to sell FIFA Ultimate Team cards for huge sums of money. The company launched an investigation last week after claims came to light, and on Friday said they discovered at least one EA account had handed out items it shouldn't have. However, apparently it wasn't not yet clear whether someone who works for EA had done it, or if the accounts had been compromised by wrong'uns. Goodness me.
]]>The Ultimate Team mode in FIFA has found itself at the heart of another conspiratorial scandal. Mere days ago, EA announced the end of a lawsuit which had alleged they were rigging matches. Now, some believe that an employee might be selling rare and valuable footballers for vast sums of real money. EA say they are investigating the allegations, and "will take swift action" if they uncover wrongdoing.
]]>A new class-action lawsuit accuses Electronic Arts of using dynamic difficulty to pressure players into buying more loot boxes in the card-collecting Ultimate Team mode of Fifa and other sports games. The plaintiffs claim the games use a dynamically difficulty adjustment system which makes teams seem worse than they are, perpetually nudging people to buy 'Player Packs' for improve their teams. EA responded saying simply nope, that's not true. But the fact that some believe it strongly enough to file a lawsuit demonstrates one of the problems with loot boxes: their presence makes it easy to suspect a game is weighted against you to tempt you to pay more.
]]>Electronic Arts have thrown in the towel in their battle with Belgium over whether or not paid loot boxes in FIFA's Ultimate Team mode constitute illegal gambling. Without admitting to anything, EA today announced that they will soon stop selling Belgian players the 'FIFA Points' microtransaction currency used to buy Ultimate Team 'packs', effectively stopping selling them. Technically if someone is sitting on €657965468476 of virtuacash they'll still be able to buy loot boxes until the cows come home, but no new Points will be sold.
"After further discussions with the Belgian authorities, we have decided to stop offering FIFA Points for sale in Belgium," EA said today. I can relate. After further discussions with the Scottish authorities, I myself recently decided to stop stabbing tourists in Scotland.
]]>The walls seem to be closing in on loot boxes and digital football cards. Just last week, the Belgian gaming commission declared that EA are under criminal investigation after refusing to cut paid loot boxes from the FIFA series. Now, sixteen gambling regulators around the world (mostly Europe, but Washington State are involved) have made a joint declaration that there's something rotten in the state of videogames. Loot boxes, skin gambling, "social casino gaming" and more are now under their scrutiny, according to the British Gambling Commission and other signatories.
]]>EA say they plan to disclose odds of loot box items in FIFA 19 and other sport 'em ups, though it's unclear quite how specific they'll get. Loot boxes in FIFA? Yup, those are the 'packs' of random players and power-ups for FIFA's long-running Ultimate Team mode (FUT), sold for a virtuacash or a premium microtransaction currency, which players use to build and boost a team. The packs give a vague indication of what might be inside (a bit like Mass Effect multiplayer, if that's a more illuminating reference point to you) but doesn't actually tell players odds on getting the specific shinies they long for - a common but still shoddy loot box practice.
]]>EA have landed the Champions League license for FIFA 19, taking possession from Konami's rival Pro Evolution Soccer series after its 10-year deal expired. Y'know, the Champions League, the Pan-European football competition with the sixth-best theme song in sporting television (after Formula 1, the Test Match Cricket, Football Italia, BBC Snooker, and Monday Night Handegg). The Champions League will be splattered all across FIFA 19, getting its own mode, sending Alex Hunter to play in it during its story mode 'The Journey', and popping up in FIFA Ultimate Team and all that too. And most importantly, it has that song. Well, kind of. Here, give this trailer a listen.
]]>Football finally stopped recently, when Pepe's Injured Aura and the rest of the plucky Real Madrid scrappers won the Champions League in a penalty shoot-out. It all starts again on Friday, of course, with the first game of Euro 2016, but football definitely stopped for a minute there. It might have been a half a minute if you're interested in the Copa América, which kicked off the weekend just gone.
The point is, football never stops for long and EA know that, which is why they're already teasing next season's FIFA [official site]. Big changes may be afoot, as the game is moving to DICE's Frostbite engine. Destructible pitches incoming?
]]>According to the wise folks of digital football, there's a new king in town. Or rather, an old king who has returned to reclaim his crown. Pro Evolution Soccer 2016 has been receiving rave reviews and with FIFA head honcho Sep Blatter once again making headlines for all the wrong reasons, there's no better time for a changing of the guard.
I'll get to Pro Evo soon. Early impressions of FIFA 16 [official site] suggest Konami's kick 'em up might have to fight hard for my affection.
]]>FIFA is that game series I play while the rest of RPS shake their heads and sigh slightly. FIFA Ultimate Team is the mode I spend money on, using real currency to buy virtual football stickers which heal bruises on virtual footballer's thighs, while the rest of RPS wrestle me to the ground and try to get the debit card out of my hand before I bankrupt myself. The fight will intensify: FIFA 16 [official site] is making changes to FUT, which includes lifting the artificial caps FIFA 15 introduced for price ranges on the player trading market. There's a video explaining the changes below.
]]>“I’ve been playing FIFA competitively since 09 but it's only as of about January this year I learned to control my aggression towards it,” says David Bytheway. Bytheway, a competitive FIFA player from Wolverhampton, reached last year’s FIFA Interactive World Cup final in Rio De Janeiro, but fell at the last hurdle to Denmark’s August Rosenmeier.
The game finished 3-1 with Bytheway squandering a first half lead, compounding the disappointment of missing out on not just the $20,000 prize money, but also an invitation to the 2014 Ballon D’or - FIFA’s prestigious real life world player of the year awards ceremony.
]]>So here's a GOOD piece of news involving FIFA - the gaming franchise will finally be adding women to its playable character roster, kicking off [sorry] with the twelve women's international teams included in FIFA 16 [official site].
Here's the trailer:
]]>Pip: Adam and Graham, do the football simulators include curve ball physics? I was trying to get to sleep last night and I started wondering if curve ball physics were seen as weird or unfair or OP if they transitioned to games on account of being less predictable than straight shots.
Graham: You can add after touch to shots to curl them in PES or FIFA, but it requires careful aiming on the part of players and is usually limited by the skill of the real life footballer you're controlling at that moment. The camera angle, because it's side-on like a television camera, also stops it from being an easy bend-away-from-goalkeeper cheat.
Adam: Going way back, it was the best way to score in Sensible Soccer.
Pip: But people don't kick off if you use it? What I mean is if curling a ball happens in real life you have to suck it up - okay you might complain but it's something that physically just happened and you can't argue that it's a broken system - but in a game I was wondering if that held or whether it was treated differently.
]]>Foot-to-ball isn't actually on the list of "things I do not understand". I followed it closely for a few years in the mid nineties so I'm not a stranger to how the game works. My reference points, however, are outdated and weirdly specific and I have never played FIFA. This post about FIFA Ultimate Team player updates can only go well then…
N.B. Usually Graham would be doing that stuff but he and John are on a "coffee adventure" so here I am.
]]>FIFA 15 is a game that I will definitely play. The latest entry in EA's endless foot-to-ball series will bring the PC version in-line with the next-gen console releases, finally giving us the new physics and graphics engine that console players received last year. It'll also bring one of E3's most hyperbolic trailers, which is embedded below alongside a thousand whiny complaints from me.
]]>The foot-to-ball season is over! What does that mean? More foot-to-ball! 2014 is a World Cup year, which means we get to experience the sport being played at the highest level combined with naturally increased levels of drama, excitement, disappointment and tabloid controversy. Who will become this tournament's national pariah? It's anyone's game!
It also means EA has another opportunity to stick you/me for more money in exchange for basically the same game. This year they're offering up the World Cup not as an expansion or a standalone product at least, but as a free addition to the microtransaction-funded FIFA14 Ultimate Team mode. This is good, because it's technically free. This is bad, because it's "technically" free. There's a trailer below which explains everything. Sort of.
]]>Association football is, in many ways, the greatest real-world PC game. It's a squad-based real-time tactical co-op/competitive multiplayer game with over 150 years of lore and canon to obsess over. It has squillions of characters, each with their own stats, backstory, and internal lives right down to daily routines. The game is still updated, but some rules changes are controversial, and other rules are still often misunderstood. You can collect thousands of cosmetic items. That's a Game Of The Year 10/10 PC Platinum All-Gold Classic if I ever heard of one.
All of which is to say that EA's free-to-kick FIFA World is now in open beta.
]]>You might not know it, but FIFA 14 is a strategy game. Not just a game with strategy in it, but a real-time strategy game with units you command against an opponent. It's also a roleplaying game about levelling up, a management game about economies and trading, a fighting game about manual dexterity and timing moves, and a collectable card game with all the charm of Panini stickers or baseball cards.
It's a foot-to-ball game, but you don't need to know anything about the sport to love it. I mean, I got into foot-to-ball because of FIFA, not the other way around. I have played perhaps a thousand hours of it over the past three years. And now, with FIFA 14, I'm taking my first steps into FIFA Ultimate Team. Let me explain to you why GManhattan FC is now my favourite club in the world.
]]>EA are bloody up to something. Something that might just involve seizing back a prime cut of PC gaming rump. Browser Tiger Woods, browser Ultima fan-baiting and, soon browser FIFA. The next time you hear someone say that the major publishers don't care about PC gaming anymore, tell 'em about this sinister-but-exciting plan.
]]>We understand that some of our readers are fond of a sport called Foot-to-Ball, played by young men with fashionable haircuts and uncomplicated wives. Part of its underground popularity has been fueled by the long-running rendition of the sport in videogamingvision by a small, independent company know as Electronic Arts.
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