A recent theory spreading through theFIFA 21Ultimate Team fanbase is causing quite the stir. It seems as though quite a few players are convinced that EA has been nerfingFIFA 21player cards a few weeks after release to force players to spend money trying to obtain the latest upgrades.
A common experience forFIFAplayers is apparently finding a great budget player, scoring goals with them, and thinking they’ve found the talisman of theirFIFA 21squad. Then, after they’ve played a few games everything seems to go wrong. According to this recent fan theory, the downturn in player quality is due to EA secretly nerfing player cards after release to force the current meta toward recent promo cards and Squad Building Challenges.
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A recent Reddit thread has players discussing their experience with fantastic players that seem to take a statistical dip. With nothing about these kinds of nerfs in patch notes, some players believe EA is hiding the nerfs to drive pack sales.EA has become notorious for its use of microtransactions, so players may have a point. Making older promo cards worse could force players to try and get the newer ones.
The Reddit thread included a laundry list of players that seem to have been stripped of their stats, but even if EA has been intent on selling Ultimate Team packs, hiding player card nerfs would be difficult. Recently, dataminers found code that couldblock theFIFAUltimate Team mode in some countries. If code existed to nerf player cards, proof would likely have been found. It’s more likely other issues are causing players to feel like they are getting worse.
For example, an inconsistent internet connection may harm reaction speed and causes some issues that could result in poor performance. The most likely scenario is probably that players are winning a bunch of games in a row once they get that player in their squad, and then running into tougher players as they climb the ranks. The harder games make it seem like their players are worse by comparison.Difficulty spikes inFIFA 21are likely an issue like these, rather than developer tampering.
Without a response fromFIFA 21developer EA Sports players may never know the real answer, but some fans are convinced their players are being tampered with. This accusation also appeared in the previous titleFIFA 20, and EA declined to respond then, so unless the theory becomes mainstream players may not get a developer response.
FIFA 21is available on Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X.
