Letter to EA Team about Career Mode issues

Dear EA FC Team,

I am not sure how interested you are in my opinion, since I am 58 years old and not in the age group you are targeting. But I thought it is time for me to let you know how an old customer, yet still a customer, feels about the bugs you introduced with the latest game update.

I have played this game since 1994, except for 2002 and 2003, I bought every new version. Being in the software business myself, I understand the trials and tribulations you are facing with each new version. Losing FIFA’s partnership might have caused even more headaches.

But let me get to the point: As an older player my interest in FUT is pretty much non-existent, I leave that to the younger players and only play it when my curiosity gets the better of me and I want to see how I am doing against those players. I am doing surprisingly well, yet I can’t enjoy it, since each version comes with one or two magic tricks, meaning most of the players don’t know how to play soccer, but learn to take advantage of the flaws of the game.

No, I love playing career mode as it gives me the chance to relive my unfulfilled dream of becoming a pro player in my younger years. The latest version (EA FC 24) completely ruined it for me. Career mode has been broken for years already, but it used to be bugs I could live with, such as created players getting weird pictures that don’t even look closely like the player I created. Well, I learned to live with that, though it shouldn’t be a hard and expensive fix.

But now the game has become unplayable. I created players, played a season, was proud to be promoted to the Bundesliga only to learn that that is the end of it, because with the start of the second season, several of my created players are missing and when I hit Squad Hub the game will crash every time. I tried everything including using a different save point, but nothing got me by that bug.

I went online and saw that this is a bug that many other players experience as well, and it has been described in every detail possible to you. Well, someone from your community apparently reads posts while doing whatever, except reading all of the info in the posts, comes back and states that a patch that had been released fixed the stability issue and all I had to do is to start a new career. That got me nervous already, as it is not just a stability issue, there is much more to it. Well, your “patch” fixed the crashing. Yet, created players still disappear or magically change their position. Throughout the last weeks I noticed already random crashes of the game, but I did not lose anything, so I was ok, it can happen. It is pretty clear that your last game update introduced some major bugs. That can happen, I know that out of experience, but your lack of trying to get a fix in ASAP for what is clearly a showstopper issue is what makes me upset. I am not an internet troll, I think this is the first time in ten years that I posted anything about a bug and my frustration about that bug in this forum, but I am at a point now where I wished there was a real alternative to your game out there. For years career mode was on your backburner because you see the big money in FUT. I get it, you are in it to make money, but then I would recommend losing some buyers and scratch career mode entirely, instead of putting out a product that is clearly an afterthought and that disappoints every year in new ways. Yes, I could just stop buying it, but you know, I love soccer and I am guilty of falling into the trap again and again, that is on me. I am not even talking about the massive amount of slapstick goals, goalies that apparently can’t protect the near corner to save their lives and all the other gameplay comedy the game has to offer, I learned to live with that, I am talking about bugs that make the game unplayable.

If you are not serious about your career mode clientele, fine, stop offering it, I will cry for a couple of days and move on. But if you want career mode to still make you some money, then please show some respect to that player base and fix issues ASAP.

I am sure I will get some real interesting comments, such as “Then stop buying and playing this game”, etc. Let me tell you right away already, I decide when I stop playing this game, I decide if I am ok with wasting my time and money, and I really don’t care what you have to say. What I care about is that the EA team takes those of us who love career mode seriously and lets us know if we have any value to them or not. Half-hearted efforts to rake in some money from this player base just don’t cut it anymore.