For some years now, the issue of gambling has been hanging over EA's biggest product FIFA Ultimate Team like the sword of Damocles. The publisher might not want to change their pay-to-win concept, but a new court route could mean that the transfer market gets removed in EA Sports FC to avoid legal issues.
In the fall of 2023 we can expect a completely new FIFA game from Electronic Arts. Ok... it won't be that wild, as the end of the cooperation between EA and FIFA basically means that we will be buying the same football game under a different name: EA Sports FC.
But there should be some changes for Ultimate Team once again. For quite some time, leaks have made the rounds that the transfer market in FUT will be removed. Say what? We explain why there might be something to it...
FIFA Future: No FUT Transfer Market In EA Sports FC?
Ultimate Team has always been legally problematic. Buying Packs with real money isn't the real issue here, however.
A new court ruling from Austria shows that trading is the real problem – the possible profit from items bought with real money on an external market, is the crux of pay-to-win. If we can no longer buy and sell players, it is much less important whether TOTY Icon Ronaldinho is packed as a tradeable or as an untradebale. EA might even have to pay some players' money back that they invested in FUT before.
What makes the FUT concept illegal is not the packs itself, it's the possibility to trade with items. Transfers and thus also coins could disappear in the future – this has been speculated again and again since the start of FIFA 23 and would also help EA in terms of legal issues.
Admittedly, the whole thing is really just a rumor. But even long before the start of FIFA 22, we speculated that we would get fewer games in the Weekend League – which ultimately happened.
Ultimate Team Without Transfer Market: How FUT Could Look Like In EAFC
If you're kinda lost now, and thinking: "How can FUT even work without a transfer market?" We can already imagine something...
It starts with the potential change that we can only earn packs in EAFC or buy them with points. So that doesn't take away the opportunity for EA that gamers keep throwing real money at them. However, there would be no option anymore to resell EAFC superstars to others.
This protects EA as it would at least partially avoid the gambling problem: Yes, packs can still be bought with points and included items are rng, but no other advantage (coins) can be achieved. EA could simply copy the model without a transfer market from Konami's PESs: in their FUT counterpart "myClub" were no options for transferring players. If you wanted to get special versions, you either had to invest real money – or grind a lot to get the in-game premium currency...
In clearer words, the pay-to-win concept remains the same in EA Sports FC and will not change. If you put more real money into FUT, you will be able to open more packs and thus have higher chances of getting better players. However, the gambling factor will be contained, because it would then no longer matter whether a card is worth 10,000 or 4 million coins.
Since the transfer market prices are partly arbitrarily set and adjusted by EA anyway – or sometimes even manipulated – this doesn't even have to be a bad change. At least from the EA point of view, there would simply be no more trading between the players with previously purchased items: lawyers love this trick.
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If it actually comes to that, EA should also ensure that we all can get enough different players. After all, fans who don't spend any additional money on FUT also want to put together their dream team. However, the RTG experience would definitely become much more random if nobody could save coins for one specific star – and instead we have to rely on packing the right players. And if we actually get a PES model, we would have to look forward to an extremely time-consuming grind, because of course EA will make sure that we don't get too many OP players too easily.
We have to wait and see what happens, and once again it should be emphasized: the whole thing is still nothing but a rumor. But EA always changes some things in FUT.
We will keep you informed as soon as there is any news on this. And EA undoubtedly is under pressure to change SOMETHING, as complaints from the community and more legal consequences won't stop soon.