How EA's Repeated Updates Have Undermined 30 Years of Player Loyalty

Today, after nearly 30 years of playing EA football games — a journey that, if I remember correctly, began back in 1996 — I have come to the conclusion that I can no longer continue with EA FC under these circumstances, or at least not with its Ultimate Team mode.

The reason is simple: I need to protect my mental and emotional well-being from further harm.

This is a decision I had been contemplating for quite some time. Today, after two months of playing FC 27, and following the latest update, I finally brought myself to act on it, with a heavy heart and a profound sense of frustration and helplessness. The update has made the game feel so fundamentally different that it is almost as if I have just started playing an entirely new game, with unfamiliar mechanics and a bizarre, alien gameplay experience that bears little resemblance to what I had spent so much time learning and understanding.

There is just one question I have been unable to answer for myself:

How can a game publisher with EA's history, experience, and decades of expertise implement changes of such a sensitive and fundamental nature so recklessly and prematurely? Changes of this magnitude should be approached with extreme caution, introduced gradually, and subjected to the most rigorous testing, with trial and error kept to an absolute minimum.

Even changes on a fraction of this scale could have far-reaching consequences across a game as complex and interconnected as this one. So how can such sweeping changes, affecting so many different aspects and layers of gameplay, be pushed out in such an indiscriminate and seemingly unconsidered manner?

I genuinely struggle to understand the reasoning behind this approach.

Regards