The game was filled with lineups of legends.
FIFA is EA’s most profitable series. The game is sold in millions of copies, and the Ultimate Team mode has long destroyed the competition with other football simulators. But FIFA has a problem: every year the prices in it are insanely reduced. Fifers criticize EA for thoughtlessly creating special cards and losing interest in the game a few months earlier than usual.
We checked the claims of the players and compared the economy of different parts of FIFA.
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There are too many colored cards in FUT 23. Strengthening the squad has become a routine
Special cards are the main culprit in the decline in interest in FIFA according to the core audience. They seem to come out too often and force you to constantly shuffle the composition. Gamers simply have no choice: any Quicksell player from the new event is better than the gold counterpart in the current team. Often, mediocre colored cards outperform football stars who only keep their value up with good chemistry, feints, and unique talents. Realistic upgrades for Team Player of the Week (TOTW) or Player of the Month (POTM) are outdated and indifferent.
The statistics confirmed the feelings of the players — the number of special cards has multiplied. FUT 19 is the last part of the online mode with thoughtful events. In FIFA 20, cards have already been released every two weeks (40 types), and since 2021, EA has released events every seven days (60 cards). FIFA 23 in January passed the annual cycle of footsim from four years ago! A large number of cards provoked the growth of SBCs and endless tasks. Unsurprisingly, their buff value has dropped significantly.
How much did the stars cost before? They kept the price for a long time, but FIFA 22 destroyed the economy
Have football player cards really fallen in price? I took the top three world stars: Leo Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Kylian Mbappe and compared the dynamics of their value in different parts of FIFA. The fall of the FUT market is amazing! Due to high demand, expensive players held the price better than others, but EA brought down the price even on them.
The dynamics of the transfer value is associated with an increase in special cards, the frequent appearance of SBCs and an increase in tournament rewards. Unsold packs didn’t slow down the glut of the market, but they further pissed off the fifers.
FIFA 19 is the latest hardcore installment in the series. The players had a limited number of coins, so the transfer value of popular cards often increased. The price of the players decreased very slowly: if Ronaldo fell out, we could keep him for a couple of months. The game gave pay-to-win, but caused strong emotions.
Everyone says that donat decides in FIFA. Is it so?
In 2019-2020, FIFA reached the golden mean. Interesting events were added to the game, and gamers accumulated coins for stars after the New Year holidays. The cards became more accessible, but did not destroy the market and retained a sense of progress. EA noticed the increase in donations and changed FIFA 22 beyond recognition. It still met the formal pay-to-win criteria and didn’t allow you to assemble a roster of legends without great luck, but the problem of chasing strong players disappeared.
In 2023, I came to a startling conclusion: Team of the Year (TOTY) is no longer needed. Fifers got fed up with the events and already in December they were playing lineups of idols, so the involvement of the fans of the series must have dropped a lot. A game that used to run hundreds of hours now only works for a couple of months.
FIFA 23 won donat, but became boring. And EA will have to deal with this crisis very soon.
