FIFA 18 Microtransactions Cause Fans To Boycott Game
Another EA title has provoked the ire of gamers and once again, it has something to do with microtransactions. The publisher is now dealing with another consumer backlash following the recent changes to its highly lucrative FIFA 18 soccer sim.
A consumer campaign emerged this week from fans of the popular soccer series along with the hashtag #FixFifa. Posts, videos, and threads began popping up on Reddit, YouTube and Twitter. There was even a petition at Change.org that has already attracted more than 23,000 signatures.
Players also began calling out an organized boycott of the game, asking fellow players to hold off spending money on the game until EA fixes a host of problems in the game. This is definitely hard for EA given that the boycott coincides with Black Friday where the publisher hopes to make a killing with new special packs being offered in-game.
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The problems FIFA 18 players are complaining about include gameplay cheats, balancing issues and glitches. However, the game's heavy emphasis on in-game purchases is also attracting a lot of negative criticism with the game seemingly repeating the same pay-to-win scheme that brought Star Wars Battlefront 2 so much hate.
Like all recent games from EA, the soccer sim allows its users to earn in-game currency in order to create an "Ultimate Team" made up of their favorite players. This is an integral part of the game and often takes some serious time investment for players to acquire top stars.
However, some players can skip this grinding by simply shelling out a few bucks to acquire the best athletes for their Ultimate Team. This has lead to the prevalence of skewed strategies such as "Pace" where a player's team is composed of stars that have high pace stats.
"I get that Ultimate Team was designed to make money for EA, lots of money," said YouTuber Goran Popovic "But the balance has shifted from a good game with micro-transactions to one where you kind of need to spend money to save time, unless you're super lucky or one of the greatest players."
EA has yet to issue a statement addressing the FIFA 18 boycott but there's no denying that in-game purchases are a major part of the publisher's business model as indicated in the company's most recent financial statement. However, with the recent backlash against the microtransaction models in place in their recent game releases, they might have to rethink their whole strategy coming in to 2018.
