Fans of EA Sports College Football 27 are revolting over the game’s sneaky microtransactions, but it’s claimed EA won’t cave no matter how loud the backlash gets.
Microtransactions in sports video games are nothing new. For as manipulative and expensive as they are, they’ve been a fixture for years, for the simple reason that plenty of people are happy to pay for them.
The EA Sports FC football games and the NBA 2K basketball games are among the most notorious examples, but the newly released EA Sports College Football 27 is a new contender for the worst of the lot.
That’s because publisher EA has not only incorporated microtransactions into the game’s offline single-player mode, but it allegedly only did so after providing preview copies to influencers which did not feature them.
For context, EA Sports College Football 27 is the latest entry in EA’s series of American football sims and only launched today for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and, for the first time in series history, on PC.
The game has been subjected to an immediate review bombing on Steam, with the majority of player reviews overwhelmingly negative and even the positive reviews stressing that the microtransactions are a huge downside.
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As for why these microtransactions are so heinous, it’s because EA is essentially charging players money to do something they could do for free in previous entries.
In the game’s single player modes – Dynasty and Road To Glory – you can adjust how much experience you earn from matches, allowing you to earn it at a much quicker rate. Unlike the last couple of games, however, you can only do this by spending money on the game’s microtransactions, called College Football Points.
‘Take microtransactions out of single player modes. No season passes, no payment for upgrades, this is disgusting behaviour,’ writes Stu Piddazz.
‘Was really looking forward to this. College Football! Finally on PC! Then, I saw that EA introduced pay-to-win in single player game modes! Yeah, absolutely not. I’m returning this,’ says ChrisPBacon.
According to szerek, the game is also incredibly glitchy and apparently doesn’t let you reach level 100 with your coach without spending money.
What’s especially upsetting for fans is that it otherwise sounds like EA Sports College Football 27 is a very solid game, and the best entry in the series
‘It sucks to give this a negative review, because gameplay wise, depth wise, and presentation wise, this is the best College Football game to date. But, EA had to go and ruin it,’ says finger.
‘Probably the best Dynasty and Road To Glory have ever been and it’s all overshadowed by EA’s biblical greed,’ concurs CorruptSleet.
Many of the reviews also include the hashtag #CFBPlayDontPay, which originates from YouTuber Bordeaux, who is partnered with EA and was able to play EA College Football 27 early.
Bordeaux has posted a new video criticising the inclusion of microtransactions, adding that he was never told these would be a thing in the game and only found out during the early access period earlier this week.
‘You can’t just sneak microtransactions in, have us creators super excited to play the game, say nothing about it in Chicago, and just expect this to be cool. Expect us to all be so excited and happy about the game still,’ said Bordeaux.
It’s apparently not just the players. Anonymous sources within EA have told Insider Gaming that members of the development team are equally ‘livid’ about the microtransactions.
However, despite the call to arms to get EA to U-turn, sources suggest it’s extremely unlikely the company will pivot in response to the backlash, no matter how loud it gets.
One source said: ‘A band-aid might be put out to make people happy in the short term, but additional costs for players are going to be added moving forward. It’ll all just have the messaging of, ‘Well, you don’t have to spend the money if you don’t want to.’
Mind you, that’s what they said about them in Star Wars: Battlefront 2, which EA were eventually forced to remove after fan protest and which lead to the whole concept of loot boxes disappearing from other games, by almost every publisher, almost overnight.
Even so, this doesn’t bode particularly well for other EA Sports games, so don’t be shocked if EA Sports FC 27 launches this year with even more microtransactions than usual.
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