EA has apologized to FC 24 fans after a bugged challenge accidentally awarded thousands of players an incredibly expensive and hard-to-obtain TOTY player.
According to a Blog Posted on the official website, it appears that for 24 minutes on January 30, players participating in the new Squad Builder Challenges (SBC) had a spectacularly high chance of obtaining the non-tradable Lionel Messi 86+ OVR card worth several hundreds of euros.
FC 24 Official Launch Trailer | Football is yoursEA was informed of the problem and removed the challenge within half an hour, but it was already too late; thousands of players had already picked it up, leading those who had not I was so lucky to call on EA to level the playing field – literally and metaphorically – and offer the card to everyone.
“We understand that this has caused frustration within the Ultimate Team community, and we apologize and appreciate your patience,” the team said. “We explored several scenarios on how to proceed in a way that was both fair and would preserve the long-term health of the game.”
EA’s solution? Players who completed this SBC while it was available “will retain their rewards” and “the SBC will not return as originally intended.” According to the developer, only “0.7 percent” of Ultimate Team players obtained a TOTY Messi item at the time the erroneous challenge was in progress (thanks, VGC).
“We know this is not a perfect solution and we will continue to review our processes with the aim of minimizing such issues in the future,” the team said.
“The only people who will defend this are the ones who had Messi and were panicking their card would be taken away from them,” said a player in the official Reddit of the football match.
Others dispute EA’s “0.7 percent” claim, saying: “I mean, the chances of having Messi in this one SBC were about 20 to 25 percent.”
“This is likely a real number, but this number does not represent active players or people who had access to their consoles at the time the content was released,” agree with another. “The majority of people tuning in at content time are Europeans, so the majority of players who participated in the SBC are also Europeans.”
“If you are a dedicated player from the European time zone, you will see a lot of Messi,” lamented another player.
At the end of last year, EA had to deactivate an EA Sports FC 24 perk to resolve an issue that gave some players an unfair advantage in the game.
The problem in football simulation allowed dribblers with the Trickster playing style to attach the ball to their calf then simply run into the opponent’s net to score.
