When you base things off of real-life equivalents, you’re bound to end up with a few hurt feelings. Such tends to be the case in sports games that include real-life figures translated into the gaming world.
Once you start putting a quantifiable number to someone’s stats and abilities, they tend to get a bit incensed. Feeling that they should be placed higher up, many players often speak out against these games in one way or another.
Such has been the case with the upcoming EA title Fifa 21, the latest installment in their annual franchise. While these games tend to change very little year to year, sometimes accidentally keeping the same dated graphics in from last year, the players themselves often do.
With the cards for the Ultimate Team mode released – a “deck-building” game, so to speak, where you obtain cards of each individual player and build your team off of them – players have taken to this year’s haul with gusto.
The most notable reaction has been from Romelu Lukaku, who said some things that aren’t exactly family-friendly. Beginning his own conspiracy theory, part of Lukaku’s statement involved the following:
“Let’s be honest fifa just mess with the ratings so we players start complaining about the game and give them more publicity.” Afterward, Lukaku insisted that he’s aware of his own abilities regardless of what EA has to say.
The ironic elephant to point out is, of course, that Lukaku’s statement brought considerably more publicity to the title that he’s speaking of, so… mission accomplished?
Lukaku is far from the only player discussing the ratings, though. Placed above is the card for Arsenal forward Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who saw his card’s overall rating reduced from 88 to 87.
This is an especially confusing move given that last season, despite Arsenal’s generally poor form, Aubameyang was crowned their Player of the Year and took part in winning the FA Cup. In fact, most fans consider his season to have been a strong one regardless of Arsenal’s own poor showing.
There are plenty of players who have a bone to pick with EA over their rating, but it may not be EA’s fault. These ratings are based off of an algorithm that combines statistics over a period of time for a player and them creates a card for them based off of this, often making more in real-time depending on how a season progresses.
It’s possible that the interruptions to the season due to COVID may have caused many players to be given weaker cards than usual. Or, conversely, these players could have just been given lower cards and are responding to the decision understandably, if a bit hilariously.
