By Mark Baber
November 22 – Ahead of Black Friday when EA sports would expect to be selling lots of FIFA Ultimate Team coins, players have been complaining about multiple problems with the latest game update and say they will launch a boycott.
The #FixFIFA tag has been trending on Twitter whilst a petition on change.org started has gathered 9,146 signatures.
The petition argues that the FIFA 18 demo launched in early September was a “vast improvement over previous editions of the FIFA franchise.” However, when patch 1.04 came out there was “a complete overhaul of game mechanics due to Long shots/Goalkeepers not being up to scratch.”
The petitioners argue the game “then became 17.2.”
Amongst the issues that need to be addressed according to the petitioners are:
“Input Delay/EA Servers during online seasons/any online game mode including WL causing button delay ( Always been a problem but certainly does need addressing. )
Freezing when trying to access ‘Featured Squad’ in Squad Battles
Change of kit numbers
Bug where when the ball goes out of play power bar/player name vanishes
Catalogue XP not working
Matchmaking ( A new WL Format and Matchmaking would do wonders )
Sending invites on Pro Clubs does not work, some state it does sometimes by following steps but many cannot confirm this.”
On Twitter many fans are saying the post-patch version is not the version they bought and the petitioners echo this saying: “We see releases in promotional packs to give us a possibility of ‘packing’ our favourite players and with the new addition of Icons introduced across all platforms therefore EA are certainly generating much larger profits from micro transactions but yet we are to see no action being taken to actually give the customer a happy experience & a enjoyable one at that for ultimately in a nutshell thousands of us have stuck by the FIFA franchise and spent a lot of our money to a game we enjoy, Personally I purchased this game based on Pre-Patch Fifa 18 Not the game I have now been left with.”
The petitioners urge players not to purchase FIFA points, Open Packs “until these issues are at least addressed and we have a solution,”
That this campaign is gaining traction can be seen from a Twitter poll in which 13,775 people voted with 82% saying they would not be buying FIFA points during Black Friday.
For its part, EA Sports, who are being inundated with multiple complaints especially form regions where servers are slow, have thanked fans for “constructive posts which state where you think the game could be changed for the better and what bugs you may have come across,” and encouraging players to “explain not only what you’re not happy with, but also how you’d like to see it fixed.”
Contact the writer of this story at mark.baber@insideworldfootball.com