Ultimate Team Has Killed This Game

Let’s be honest, guys; Ultimate Team is the biggest reason this game has ended up in its current state.

This money trap created by EA — and unfortunately fueled by thousands of players — has caused the game to drift away over the years from being a football simulation into a “great-looking but terrible arcade game.”

Players who pour insane amounts of money into the game, spend hours doing nothing but opening packs, and more importantly enable real-money transactions through the FUT economy, have unknowingly fallen into EA’s trap. Over time, EA shifted its primary focus away from making a football game and toward maintaining the FUT ecosystem — essentially a money-printing machine.

FUT is definitely not a football game. From the matches I played just to try it out, I personally witnessed how the game engine has turned into a strange arcade system built entirely around selling overpriced, artificially diversified, pay-to-win cards filled with absurd attributes and skills.

EA has deliberately designed a broken football experience to sell these cards, and it’s clear that players who invest their time and money into FUT are swallowing this bait without question.

To push players toward chasing “special” cards, football itself has been turned into a circus in FUT:

-Players perform endless, ridiculous skill moves back to back like robots

-Completely unrealistic goals are scored

-Defending has been made almost impossible so that even the worst FUT players who spend money can score easily — purely to make their paid cards feel “valuable”

-CPU-controlled players don’t help with defending at all; they only support attacking

As a result, every match has at least five goals. Constant 5–5, 7–4, 8–6 scorelines that have absolutely nothing to do with real football have become the norm.

As someone who has never spent a single cent on the FUT money trap, I can say this clearly:

If EA had continued to develop the other online modes with the goal of creating a realistic football simulation, I wouldn’t care in the slightest about whatever shady systems exist inside FUT. Everyone is free to decide how they spend their time and money.

However, the money flowing in from FUT has made EA so greedy that the game has now completely turned into a ridiculous arcade experience.

Seasons mode has also been sacrificed because of FUT, as all development decisions are made solely to keep the FUT economy alive.

In my opinion, the continuous decline in gameplay quality over the past five years — and the fact that the game has now reached such a nonsensical state — is mainly due to this reason.

Of course, the lack of a proper competitor that makes a decent football game is also a major factor, and I acknowledge that. But from what I can see, no one wants to challenge a system that prints money like a mint.

I am 43 years old and have been playing football games since 1994.

The only reason I love a game is its gameplay quality and sense of realism.

From 1994 to 2000, I played FIFA;

from 2000 to 2011, Winning Eleven / PES;

and from 2011 onward, I returned to FIFA.

Whichever company made the better, more realistic football game, I always bought and played that one.

For all the reasons I’ve explained above, FC26 will be the last football game produced by EA that I purchase.