Paris St. Germain once paid 222 million euros for Neymar. Anyone who plays Fifa Ultimate Team (FUT) has the opportunity to get the Brazilian for as little as 100 euros. Or 200? Or is it 500? That’s unclear, after all it depends on the luck of the person at the controller. However, it is clear that FUT can become very expensive very quickly.
Ultimate Team is the most popular mode of Fifa games by Electronic Arts (EA). Anyone who plays this has the opportunity to build up a complete team and get their own favorite players into the team. This happens using virtual trading cards, which are divided into different quality levels. The better the player, the rarer and more valuable their card.
The cards can be bought with the game currency coins on the transfer market or drawn in virtual packs. These are either also available for coins or for Fifa Points. And those cost real money. Players can invest sums from 99 cents to 99.99 euros per purchase. There is usually no limit to how often you do this. Anyone who has linked their gaming account to PayPal only needs a few seconds for the entire transaction.
Wrzburg expert calls for a critical examination of in-game runners
Lambert Zumbrgel believes that the temptation to get better at games by paying real money should be viewed very critically. He is a graduate social educator and media educator and currently works at the Wrzburg City Library. Children and young people in particular quickly run the risk of overreaching themselves financially. Zumbrgel recommends parents to check whether there are settings that can be used to restrict real money payments. Usually that is the case. He emphasizes: “Wherever possible, parents should make sure that no money can flow.”
Then they should deal with the topic together with the child. “As the child gets older, they have to learn how to handle money,” he says. His recommendation: “The younger the child, the more parents should stop payments.”
“Wherever possible, parents should make sure that no money can flow.”
Lambert Zumbrgel, qualified social educator and media educator–
Another catch in addition to the sometimes immense costs: If you buy a lot of Fifa Points, you don’t buy the guarantee for a rare player. He just buys the ability to open many packages without much effort. Whether it’s Neymar, Cristiano Ronaldo or just worthless average footballers is a matter of luck, just like with Panini pictures. Although every player brings coins to the transfer market, if you don’t draw rare cards, you need patience to get top stars. The games themselves are also rewarded with coins. However, it takes a few weeks to months to become a super team.
Package probabilities have been displayed in FUT since Fifa 19. Anyone who wants to open packages can now see how big the chance is of a special player. The probabilities are low, sometimes less than one percent for special cards. In Fifa 21, EA also introduced Preview Packs. If you want, you can first look at the content and then decide on a purchase. However, the share of the preview packages in the total offer is small.
Top local athlete knows the dangers of FUT
One who knows the dangers of the mode very well is Florian Meiner. His name is different, but he wants to remain anonymous. Mine comes from top-class sport here, is in his late 20s. Over the years he has repeatedly invested money in Fifa points in order to be able to buy player packages. He speaks of “a Fuffi every year”.
Meiner thinks opening player packs can definitely be compared to gambling. “You get the thrill of thinking about how many packages you can open with the money now,” he says. You could get addicted to that.
That didn’t happen to him himself. But he says that he noticed in his circle of friends how others invested significantly more money than he did. The teams were already an issue when he was at school. If a friend got a good player, you wanted to have one yourself. “I do think that it mutually reinforces each other,” he says.
In order to protect minors from the dangers, Meiner emphasizes, there must be stricter rules. “When you’re young, you do things that you don’t think twice about. I think Electronic Arts has a duty to respond to that.”
EA disagrees with the allegations
EA itself rejects the criticism in its latest statement on the matter: “We don’t ‘push’ our players to spend more money on our games. […] The majority of our Fifa players never spend money on in-game objects.” The decision to spend money on the game is “always optional.” Younger players are “not encouraged in any way to spend money on our games and we strongly encourage using the family options we provide to manage the content children have access to, limit their ability to spend, and manage their playtime.”
Also, EA disagrees that the mechanics in Ultimate Team are gambling. “Regulatory authorities in several countries around the world have publicly announced that a loot box has nothing to do with gambling as long as there is no possibility of payment,” emphasizes the group, also citing the decision of a judge in a US federal court. Loot boxes are virtual packages that contain special game content – just like the player packages.
“We don’t ‘push’ our players to spend more money on our games.”
Electronic Arts–
Tatjana Halm from the Bavarian consumer advice center strongly criticizes this decision. “It seems as if there were laws that are no longer up-to-date,” says the lawyer. “One should deal with newer developments.” In particular, Halm includes virtual countervalues, which the players can also have paid out in their games. For Halm it’s clear: “The fact that you don’t know what you’re getting makes it a game of chance.” The consumer advice center has been focusing on the topic of loot boxes for years.
Games in which there are loot boxes are often played by children and young people. This is where things get particularly critical. “Underage players are not allowed to gamble. We are clearly concerned that gambling-like variations are being used,” says Halm. Fifa is a particularly dangerous example. “This is a very well-known game that is used by a particularly large number of young people. Since you can hardly avoid it, the risk of addiction is all the greater,” says the lawyer.
Refunds may be possible
For parents whose children have spent a lot of money on Fifa packages, there is the possibility of checking a reversal. “The suppliers have to ensure that the buyers are of legal age. Otherwise they’re out of luck,” explains Halm. Parents are only liable if they enable their children to make regular purchases with their payment methods.
For children under the age of 14, the pocket money clause, which regulates the extent to which young people are legally capable, also applies. However, this involves a hurdle: the burden of proof. Zumbrgel emphasizes that parents need a good lawyer who can demonstrate that the purchase was actually made by the child itself and perhaps not by the parents.
In Belgium, EA stopped the sale of Fifa Points in 2019 after consulting the authorities.
What is Fifa?
Fifa is a football simulation by Electronic Arts, which has been published in an updated version every year since the early 1990s. The video game is available for various consoles and the PC to buy. There are various game modes in Fifa, including Ultimate Team mode, which has become the most popular mode in recent years. Fifa is the most played football simulation worldwide and is particularly popular with teenagers and young adults.
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