EA Sports FC 24 Accidently Gives Players Team of the Year Lionel Messi

EA Sports FC 24‘s biggest Ultimate Team event is the Team of the Year. Developer Electronic Arts uses this period to drop boosted versions of the world’s best soccer players into the game. Because these players are so much better than nearly everyone else in Ultimate Team, they are incredibly valuable. Most players can’t afford TOTY cards until later in the year after they’ve lost some of their value. However, a recent blunder by EA saw a large swath of the EA Sports FC 24 playerbase receive TOTY Lionel Messi for almost nothing.

EA Sports FC 24 Gives Away TOTY Lionel Messi

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Earlier today, EA Sports FC 24 introduced a brand-new Squad Building Challenge into Ultimate Team. The TOTY Leagues Player Pick let players exchange unwanted cards to earn an 86+ player pick from every league that has a TOTY player in it. The SBC was removed from the game after about 20 minutes because it quickly became apparent that it had “an issue.”

That issue was that the player pick was giving out TOTY Lionel Messi at a hugely increased rate. Unfortunately, if you didn’t finish it before it was disabled, you’re out of luck. If and when EA brings the SBC back, it’s unlikely that it will have the same drop rate as before.

This is a potentially huge issue that Electronic Arts will probably not address in a meaningful way. Remember, TOTY Lionel Messi is a 97 OVR card that was selling on the transfer market for over nine million coins. That made it one of the most expensive cards in the game, and a solid chunk of the user base got him for essentially nothing. If you didn’t complete the SBC in time, you may start to come up against many more players running TOTY Messi in your competitive games. EA has accidentally given some players a huge competitive advantage, and there’s no good way to address it.

EA could give the card to everyone, but that will never happen. Messi is simply too valuable and helps EA sell packs. The team is also unlikely to take the card away from players who received him because that would end with an even harsher pushback from the community. The most likely outcome is that EA will mostly ignore the issue and hope that the chunk of players who received Messi isn’t big enough to make a noticeable difference for the majority of players. Regardless of what happens going forward, this is far from the first time this has happened, so it stands to reason that it won’t be the last. If you don’t want to miss out next time, it’s worth jumping into EA Sports FC 24 as soon as the new content goes live each day at 1 p.m. ET.

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