 Hey guys, it's Nate, AKA The Foot Accountant. Welcome back to the channel. We have some more updates regarding EA's responses to questions about the whole black market icon moments, scandal, issue, whatever you call it that is going on right now inside of FIFA 21. There is a interview that happened between the Mirror in the UK and the EA Sports spokesperson, which of course was not name dropped or mentioned by name, but EA have made some statements that has been kind of moving around the internet today and it's causing a lot of stir in the FIFA community and we need to talk about it. Of course, just a quick little rundown. If you are not aware, there is an allegation against FIFA 21 that there are employees inside of the company that were giving out icon moments into people's accounts untradable in FIFA for exchange of a little bit of money under the table. So obviously EA, since it impacts them personally, it is employee at EA Sports that is doing this. They launched an investigation. They released this update four days ago about what is going on. The full investigation is underway and they said they basically stopped content granting in its entirety, which is like giving pro players their pro player cards or all that that entails. I'll link this, if you have not read it down below in the description that was released obviously a couple of days ago, but today we have a new update from the Mirror website, a news source from the UK and I wanna talk about what this article and what these responses from EA are kind of bringing out in the community right now with all of the, just the responses that EA had here. And obviously, we know that EA sometimes doesn't seem to understand their own game, but some of the stuff that they said today is really, really crazy. So let's get right into it, let's cut to the chase because there's some crazy, crazy stuff in here. I'm gonna go through these early on questions in this article really fast because there's not a lot of juice here, but EA said they have launched a rigorous investigation. Their initial investigation shows questionable activity. So they have found stuff, right? They are finding stuff which we know that they should. And again, they go to an extent here to say that it involves a very small number of accounts and items to make it try to minimize the problem a little bit. So they were asked if they would provide full transparency regarding the results and they did not say yes or no to that, they just said we will continue to provide updates, which they have done decently well so far. So we'll keep an eye on that. Now of course they talked about content granting again and how it is even possible. That's in the pitch notes like they linked. And again, they go to this link to say these grants have no impact on the odds of any player in the ecosystem or the market acquiring these players. So they're saying that them granting items into different people's accounts, whether it be for like they mentioned their employees for professional events or for testing, it does not affect the pack away at all or the ability for a normal Joe Schmoe to go get a card on the market. So they did say that there, they mentioned that they are able to track this level of information that they can track any specific player item on the game. Now how, you know, we see a lot of things in FIFA where, you know, maybe you lost your card or somebody quick sold your card. They can track every single card in this game, like down to the card, right? Every single gold, furlough, and mendee that is on this game, there's thousands of them, right? Every single one of those they can track. Anyways, let's move on because this is where it gets really, really, really good, right? Some professional FIFA players have said that they had to spend thousands of pounds when the latest FIFA gaming title is released in order to have a competitive advantage in order to be competitive during qualifiers and in the buildup to major events at the start of the competitive cycle, which in the view of some is creating an unequal playing field for the professional community. Now, EA responds this and says, FIFA All The Team is a multifaceted game of skill. Oh, okay. It's important to know that you can acquire all items in the game without ever spending money with purchases being entirely optional. Now let's talk about, this is technically true, right? But EA is stretching the truth so far. Basically what they're saying here is that, yeah, technically it's possible, right? You can be a top 100 trader and you can get yourself to 15 million coins by the time icon moments come out. You can go buy that icon moments from all of them. But let's think about it here. How many people in this game actually run RTG No Money Spent and trade slash play the game and grind the hours, right? To get to 15 million coins, right? Basically, if you're gonna do that, you're gonna be doing it through trading. Top 100 rewards unless you get insanely lucky pack and pack an icon or like a team of the year card earlier in the year. It's gonna be really, really hard for you to get to 15 million coins. Really, really hard. And I would venture to say that there are probably less than like 20,000 to 30,000 people in this entire world that are first owner RTG No Money Spent and have 15 million coins. I would venture to say there are very, very few people. And that number of my estimation might even be very high. I'm just trying to make a number to throw out there because there are millions of people that play this game. So just think about that though. Think about that though. EA thinks that it is very possible for you without buying fever points to attain all items in this game, whether at one time or separate times, right? Any professional competitive player needs to demonstrate the skills of the meta game in order to be considered proficient enough to compete at an elite level. Okay, now this is where it gets real good. This is where it gets real fricking good, man. Okay, so they say that any professional competitive player, any professional pro competitive player needs to demonstrate the skills of the meta game in order to be considered proficient to compete at an elite level. Which includes, right? Which includes trading, economy monitoring, squad rotation, and challenge completion. So basically, EA in the mind of EA, if you're a pro player, no wonder they tweet all these stuff out about pro players being like the next best thing basically to football players in the world. They tweet about all the stuff like they love them because in their minds, they're masters at playing the game, at the meta, trading, economy monitoring, squad and rotation and SBCs. When a lot of the times, if you're a pro player, you're spending all of your time playing the game to be good at it, you don't want to worry about the rest of this stuff. You don't want to worry about having to, is my team of the year on Boppy right now at 6.8 million coins in early February, is he gonna be 6.5 or 6 million coins at the beginning of March where I need to sell them so that I don't lose a lot of coins? Well then what if you sell the card, then you're not gonna have the best in Boppy in the game to play with and compete at the highest level that you need to as a pro player. So EA here is saying that pro players have to be proficient at trading, economy monitoring, squad rotation and challenge completion. I don't even know where to begin with this comment. It's like every single person that plays FIFA at a pro level in EA's mind has to be an absolute combination of a trader, a pro player, you have to know supply and demand and know when people are gonna be panic selling and especially in FIFA 21 where you have discords and all these traders with their services telling thousands of people to buy and sell cards like this and influencing the market from an outside perspective as well to in order to like know all of that, know when SBCs are good to complete, like what? Like no, they're pro players, they're good at playing FIFA. That's why they're a pro, right? Although the goal is to win matches, Foot isn't just about playing simulation football in the stadium, just as football isn't solely about the performance, match day, there are many areas where players need to be better than their peers in order to create an advantage on the pitch. Now there is a slight, that is true in a sense because that's what we're trying to, that's what I'm trying to do here on this channel, right? Is not so much the gameplay aspect but the economy monitoring, the trading, everything but gameplay with content in this game, they want you to be a pro at it, right? They want you to be a pro and that's what I'm here to do is to try to help you like think about these things using knowledge of the past and trading and in the market and trying to figure out when is a good play to do this? When is a good play to do this? When should you wait to buy stuff because the market's gonna go lower, right? But they want these pros to be not only just FIFA pros but to be market gurus as well. Progression is a prerequisite if you intend to be a professional player in any sport and esports are no different. So I think that this is just crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy from EA that they're saying a lot of this because it is, it's just way too far, it's way too far. I think there's a comment down below here that puts it perfectly, look at this comment. The responses are extremely ingeniousness, not sure if that's a word and paint a picture of sunshine and rainbows. EA holds the football genre hostage and milk the player base of their money because obviously a lot of the general player base does not feel like they have the time or the ability to acquire all the items on the game without spending money and that is where EA has set this game up to be. EA has set this game up to be, okay, you don't have the time or the ability to grind for a 15 million coin card in February. Okay, well, here's a shortcut. Here's FIFA points that can maybe help you get there, right? And so that's how they're gonna see it. They're gonna say, yeah, you can play this game completely free, you can run an RTG, which is what we do. But obviously they're gonna try to format the game in a way that makes you want to spend FIFA points. Why do you think that, you know, the week before we have big promos, like before Team of the Year, we have massive coins draining SBCs or during a promo, they release player pickpacks and icon-repeatable SBCs that drain coins off the market so that, oh, shoot, I'm out of coins because I did this icon moments or icon player pick SBC. Now I need to put on FIFA points when a promo comes that next Friday because I have no coins, right? And I need to get my coins back so that's what I'm gonna do because especially if the game is not making you happy, then why are you gonna wanna put in the time to grind it and to go out and try to, you know, better your ultimate team when you're just sick and tired of the game anyway? So that's why this whole thing is not actually what EA makes it seem, right? So if you're reading this article from like an EA or like an outside perspective, you're kinda like, okay, yeah, they do have a point, right? But then you look inward and you see actually how they are making this game and throwing this game out and it just does not make sense. It does not back up exactly what they're saying. Now I wanna take a look at a couple other things because I wanna talk about, specifically they said trading. They want you to trade, right? They want you to trade and make coins and be involved in the economy monitoring inside of FIFA 21. Now this is from the EA help, right? FIFA rules, don't buy coins, right? They say don't buy coins. There's a few ways to earn coins. Playing matches in foot, completing SBCs that have coins as a part of the reward, selling items or trading players for a fair price on the transfer market. So this fair price that we have right here, okay, we can trade players for a fair price. Yet, you set price ranges on this game that make cards extinct oftentimes. You change price ranges to make cards extinct earlier when they could go higher, making people make less coins, right? Or, you know, you create an extinct player on the game and fail to update that price range for multiple weeks and stuff at a time. I mean, remember some of these cards that were extinct? Bruno Fernandez Headliner was extinct for such a long time. Other cards and Babu What If, like Road to the Final Cancelo was extinct at some point this year on the game too. And, you know, EA, if you're gonna be doing this stuff, if you're gonna want us to sell these cards for fair prices, then we also need to have a fair market where we can trade these players without being inhibited by price ranges not being updated. Okay, that's my biggest issue with the fair price comment that they have here on this game, selling items or trading players for a fair price, all right? Now, let's take it one step further. Now, this is on EA's website again on the be safe with foot coins and FIFA points. When people are asked what not to do with coins and people are asked how do I earn those coins? Here's what they have said. Oh, that's the fair price thing again. But I thought these were two different things, maybe not. The fair price thing is the one thing that gets me because just that hold that word, fair price. There are so many prices on this game that are not fair, right? Icon moments, Ronaldo. If you really want a fair price for this card, you have two options. You up the pack weight, so he's actually on the market inside of your threshold which seems to be 15 million coins for all cards in this game or you just up the price or you just up the price and let the market or the ecosystem as you call it work itself out. So that's why I think today a lot of the stuff that EA is saying is really it's two faced. It seems very, very two faced because they are wanting, that was a really good deal on bid right there in that sun. There's my economy monitoring skills coming into play right there. They are wanting people to be pros at the game but they're also wanting those pros to be able to know when to buy and sell cards and to make money. And I just think that EA saying that you can attain all items in the game without ever spending money with purchases being entirely optional and they're making that sound so realistic. That's the issue that I have with this because it is definitely not realistic at all. It is not realistic at all 100% and that's the issue that I have. So wrapping this thing up, I'm really curious to see what EA do on the end of this and I hope that there's some change from this whole thing in general. But again, as you heard EA mention it multiple times during that article and during the responses that they had to those questions, they keep saying this is for a limited number of items. This is a very small portion of the community. This is not happening. This is not widespread. So just the fact that they're using those types of words to describe what is going on in this game makes me think that we're probably not gonna see too many changes. We'll hear the outcome of this. Maybe pro players and content granting will fall under a lot more stricter guidelines and stricter policies and changes now where pro players might not be able to get their cards. Whoever was doing this whole icon moment stuff might have just kinda ruined it a little bit for pro players or celebrities that get their cards from EA, they might not be able to do that anymore. So that might have been ruined because of the whole situation but I really don't feel like you're gonna hear a lot change about this because honestly, EA thinks they're doing everything right and they don't need to change anything but hopefully this causes a bunch of just talk and hopefully something changes. Whether it's price ranges being updated more fairly, more quicker, because EA knows what they're doing with price ranges, right? They obviously have all of the stats and the knowledge on where prices or where cards should be priced in this game. Day ones of promos when cards are extinct, a lot of times 100% of time that's on EA sports because they should be making those price ranges high enough that when they first come on the market and get undercut, yes, there's gonna be some demand right there but sometimes they're releasing these cards at, you know, headliner, lasano when he first released was extinct at a super duper low price. Yeah, headliner, there was another card too Oh, Mbabu, right? Headliner Mbabu, or not headliner but the what if Mbabu who was extinct right away from the beginning because he got that upgrade, EA would have should have known they released that card on a day or like really close to the day that his team actually played so he was close to getting that upgrade and they would have known his price would have gone up if they would have got that clean sheet which they did and then his price went up and he was extinct. So that's the kind of issue that I have and I just wanted to kind of bring in this conversation today to talk about it, talk it through and just realize what is going on right now in FIFA 21 and how EA paints the picture this way to the media but inside of the game we see it a completely different way and definitely not exactly the same as EA push that to the media. So that's the video for today boys. Let me know your comments down in the description for real. Let me know what you guys are thinking about this. It's crazy to follow that this is even a thing like just to know that it's going on. So drop your comments down below. Of course, if you did enjoy it, hit the thumbs up and subscribe if you're new. It's been Nathan Vodiccount and I will catch you guys later. Peace out.