Electronic Arts owns the rights to producing video games using the leagues and players found in FIFA, and will until 2022 due to negotiations between the two parties back in 2013. This has been a source of ever-increasing contention for fans of both the association and the games published by EA. Beyond the multitude of screens showing that Fifa 20 took many assets from Fifa 19 that was theorized to reuse assets from Fifa 18, the only real changes for the past Fifa titles have been the varying bugs found.
Yet for once, we’re not here to discuss Electronic Arts repeating assets; we’re actually discussing something new added to the series. Fans of the franchise have begged EA for years to do something beyond the standard reskinning and updating of rosters, and now that EA has done that, fans are once again upset.
Granted, what EA added to the game is baffling to even the wildest free-thinkers of the gaming industry. More so when you take into account that the Fifa series is played competitively, for money.
EA has added scripting to their games, that will determine if one side should score at a given time, or the other side should score. There is nothing that players can do to intercede on these predecided goals; they simply have to wait for the goal to occur.
This own goal gets even wilder on the replay 👀
(🎥 reddit/matrix4o) pic.twitter.com/2ZPgBfrkN7
— B/R Football (@brfootball) October 14, 2019
Fans have brought these wildly suspect plays to the attention of Electronic Arts, who have vehemently denied that such scripting is actually included in the game. When betting is involved, as is the ever-increasing norm of e-sports, these scripted events are even more infuriating. When international e-sport teams are investing in players, coaches, analysts, and other various staff, these scripted events become beyond absurd.
Yet with Electronic Arts refusing to admit, or simply state, that they are scripting events (known in the scene as dynamic difficulty adjustment, or DDA), there continue to be fierce debates among the community as to whether or not it actually exists. Scripting deniers state that the above videos are simply tremendously poor luck.
One thing that the entirety of the community agrees upon, however, is that the game is simply awful to play. That doesn’t stop them from continuing to purchase every microtransaction that EA offers, with some packages over $100 for players to build their Ultimate Team. Even cries from fans to boycott it, from the most frustrated, propose not buying microtransaction for an entire weekend. That’s the maximum they can reliably abstain from not purchasing transactions.
With EA reliably pulling millions annually with very little updating to the system necessary, it’s unfortunately unlikely that the franchise will change hands any time soon. At least someone is profiting from this system.
