EA apologises for the FC 24 ‘£700’ Messi debacle

EA has found themselves in a tricky situation due to a recent bug in FC 24 that gave the Team of the Year Edition Messi to thousands of players during a 24-minute window. Now, there's an outcry for compensation from the players who missed it.

On 30th January at 10 am PST, a challenge was released, and the reward for completing it was the Team of the Year Edition Messi. The challenge stayed live for approximately 24 minutes, after which EA noticed what was happening and pulled it.

The Team of the Year Messi is an extremely rare card with a ridiculously low drop rate and an even more ridiculous trading value of over £700. It also gives a pretty big advantage to anyone who has it, and naturally, a lot of the community who missed out on the bug is frustrated.

EA has stated on their official blog to address the issue:

The post clarifies the nature of the challenge that was released.

“A SBC was released on 30th January at 10 am PST with an 86+ OVR untradeable reward from 13 leagues that featured at least one TOTY Player Item,”

However, the reason for the reward being TOTY Messi is as follows:

• “Two of those leagues had only one Item matching the 86+ OVR threshold (Rest Of World and MLS)."
• "The SBC was live for 24 minutes, before its removal following the identification of a design issue."
• "In that time frame an estimated 0.7% of Ultimate team players obtained a TOTY Messi item.”

They've given a definitive figure for the number of players who were able to exploit this bug and get their hands on a £700 Team of the Year Messi. The number suggests that several thousand people were able to get their hands on Messi.

As for how EA has chosen to handle this situation might be a bit disheartening for those who did not get Messi.

“We understand this has caused frustration within the Ultimate Team Community, and we apologize and appreciate your patience. We have explored several scenarios for how to proceed in a way that is both fair and would preserve long-term game health. We can confirm the following:

• “Players who completed this SBC while it was available will keep their rewards. The SBC will not be returning as originally designed."

This is not the ideal solution and leaves a majority of the player base frustrated, while a few reap the benefits. The EA SPORTS FC Team acknowledges as much.

“We know that this is not a perfect solution, and we will continue examining our processes with the aim of minimizing such issues in the future.”

There appears to be nothing planned to compensate players who missed out on this extremely lucrative opportunity.