The FIFA franchise along with many other multiplayer titles released in the previous years have been accused of favoring players who pay to get their hands on better units, boosts and so on. EA believes that FIFA 19 Ultimate Team, much like its predecessors, isn’t such a game mode, it is only a bit more challenging to succeed in as a free-to-play player.
In a roundtable with Irish games journalists, later reported by Elite Gamer, EA’s Matt Prior explain the company’s view on the “paying to win” aspect of the game in FIFA 19 Ultimate Team, explaining that the whole escalation of it started due to the media’s perception of the matter.
According to him, FIFA 19 is not favoring paying players, rather than giving them the opportunity to get better units to include to their teams, as opposed to players that prefer the classic way. He stated:
“But there are players who don’t spend a penny and compete at high levels with teams full of top players. A lot of people challenge themselves to do it that way[…]”.
While the accusations against FIFA 19 Ultimate Team being Pay-to-Win bring bad popularity for EA, Prior believes that this is done purely due to the media. That’s why, according to his statement, the mode hasn’t had such issues in its first years:
“Ultimate Team has been going on for about ten years and only recently has the problem been posed, the problem has been raised with this prominence by the media in the last couple of years and we feel we have been almost dragged into this situation.”
As we see it, it’s up to each player to decide if FIFA 19 Ultimate Team is Pay-to-Win or not. Undeniably, players that grind hours and hours to get the best units have nothing to fear of paying players, since it all comes down to who plays better.
For what it’s worth pack odds for the mode will be disclosed when the game releases.
FIFA 19 releases on 28 September for PS4, Xbox One, PC and Nintendo Switch.
