EA Sports FC 24 Players Upset Over Outcome of Lionel Messi Mixup

EA Sports FC 24 has addressed the TOTY Messi mistake, and fans aren't happy.

By Ricky Frech

Earlier this week, developer Electronic Arts dropped a new Squad Building Challenge in EA Sports FC 24's Ultimate Team mode. This challenge was called the Team of the Year Leagues SBC, and it gave players a chance to grab a player pick featuring only cards rated 86+ from the leagues that had Team of the Year cards. Because of the way the SBC was constructed, if you happened to get an MLS player in your pick, it would be TOTY Lionel Messi, one of the best cards in the game. The MLS is generally seen as a lesser league, so Messi was given out much more often than expected, and EA took the SBC down after 24 minutes. Today, the EA Sports FC 24 team finally addressed the situation, and fans are far from happy with the response.

EA Sports FC 24's Response to the TOTY Lionel Messi Mistake

Last night, EA Sports released its update on the TOTY Lionel Messi situation. It laid out the facts of the situation and claimed that "an estimated 0.7% of Ultimate Team players obtained a TOTY Messi item." The team then explained that it was exploring options to make the situation "both fair and...preserve long term game health." To that end, EA Sports has decided to let anyone who completed the SBC keep their rewards. The SBC will also not be returning "as originally designed," though with the Team of the Year promo ending today, there's not a very good reason for it to ever come back.

What's important to note about this statement, and why the community is so upset by the response, is that EA fails to explain what group the percentage represents. If EA is taking every single Ultimate Team player into account, that percentage is likely not accurate to what players will be seeing when they load into games. Not only are there countless players who have stopped playing before this mistake, but many players have several accounts. The percentage of players consistently playing EA Sports FC 24 that received TOTY Messi could be much higher.

On top of that, many players are upset that EA is effectively doing nothing. Obviously, it's a tough situation for the developers, especially considering how valuable Messi is in EA Sports FC 24. However, this response feels lacking for many. Some wish that EA would open the SBC back up and give everyone an equal chance at getting Messi, but that might kill EA Sports FC 24's market. Again, there's not a clear answer to this problem. Players were probably going to be mad regardless, but the lack of clarity around the percentages is, in some ways, making things worse.

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What's more worrying is that EA Sports FC 24 hasn't cleaned up whatever issues have been causing these mistakes. Yesterday, some players were accidentally given Road to the Finals Nathan Tella a day before the promo was released. What's even wilder is that if you'd previously Evolved your Tella, his RTTF would have those upgrades. That made it possible for players to "earn" a 99 OVR Tella without doing anything. Fortunately, it looks like EA might be correcting this mistake by taking it back because you can't enter games with the card, but we've yet to hear an official explanation.

EA Sports FC 24 is available now on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC platforms.

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