EA SPORTS has responded to the massive criticism surrounding the TOTY Messi affair in FC 24 and apologized – that’s all that’s happening. 0.7 percent of all FUT players had benefited from the oversight. How should this figure be classified?
First things first: All FUT players who benefited from the deactivated SBC and received Lionel Messi’s TOTY card can keep it. Furthermore, the team building challenge will not return “in its original form” – there will also be no compensation. This was confirmed by EA SPORTS on Friday night in a statement on the FC 24 website. The developer also announced that the SBC had been removed from the game after just 24 minutes.
It is interesting to note how many FUT accounts received Messi’s TOTY card as a result of the mishap. The publisher puts the percentage at 0.7 percent. Official player numbers for Ultimate Team in FC 24 are not known. However, EA SPORTS stated shortly after the release that the FIFA 23 successor had already attracted 11.3 million players in the first week. Which allows some cautious conclusions to be drawn about the total number of profit-makers
At least 55,000 FUT players benefited
In 2017, EA’s then CFO Blake Jorgensen revealed that 70 to 75 percent of FIFA players are also active in Ultimate Team. This rate is unlikely to have fallen since then given the steady increase in Live Services revenue. 70 percent of 11.3 million is 7.91 million. In turn, 0.7 percent of this figure is around 55,000 – the absolute most conservative amount of players to have drawn TOTY-Messi in 24 minutes thanks to the SBC.
Taking into account that total sales have increased since the first week of FC 24, the actual number is likely to be much higher. An additional factor is the different time zones – for many of the FUT players, it was night time during the 24 minutes in question. The percentage published by EA SPORTS is also glossed over by taking into account the numerous inactive accounts. The percentage of really active users is probably significantly higher.
Because there are three types of players who are likely to make up the majority of new TOTY Messi owners: Casual gamers who just happened to be in Ultimate Team anyway. Those who quickly noticed the news spreading like wildfire via social media. Or daily users who almost always take a close look at the new content drop. Casual gamers are likely to make up only a tiny fraction of the 0.7 percent
TOTY-Messi on his own in the MLS
EA SPORTS’ “mistake” was not taking into account that the TOTY chance is different for different leagues. The SBC provided 86+ player picks for 13 elite leagues – including the MLS. However, TOTY-Messi was the only card from the North American top flight to have an overall rating of at least 86. This meant that every time the MLS was randomly selected as a league, this special card was also in the pick. So not a mistake in itself, just not in line with EA’s game idea and the scarcity of certain items
The developer has apologized to its community and announced that it will “continue to examine our processes to minimize such problems in the future”. However, the start has already failed: Only shortly after the statement, the first reports made the rounds that Nathan Tella’s Nigerian silver objects had been inadvertently converted into RTTF cards. This has interesting consequences for FUT players who have subjected the Leverkusen player to certain evolutions.
