Is FIFA ultimate team just another form of gambling?

[Airfixx]

Is It Too Expensive to Be Good at FIFA?

There are a lot of excellent FIFA players in the world, but there are only a few who can afford to compete as a professional...

bleacherreport.com

At January's FUT Champions Cup—a staple of the FIFA esports calendar—players were using teams with a real-world value of approximately $27,000, per FUT Economist.

Listened to a feature on TS about this stuff a number of weeks back; gambling, gaming and so forth.... Was shocked at the cost involved to max out these games.... Disgusting.

....Then followed ads for Bet 365, Football Index and PlayOJO.

 

[Doom Funk]

Rare to find a video game that doesn’t have some form of pay to win in it these days

Wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t still the best part of 60 quid for a copy of a game in the first place

 

[Suprnaut-]

It absolutely IS gambling. I have participated in it, perhaps to the tune of $1000-$1500. EA make the odds very low of unpacking something special, not unlike World of Warcraft drops in the .00% range.
I have never gambled at anything else other than lotto tickets. Ive read about kids maxing out the parents Visa trying to get a Messi or Ronaldo card.
Has anyone seen the latest stats for EA's microtransactions? 1 billion $ for the last fiscal quarter. EA does this with FIFA/NHL/NFL Ultimate Teams. Its literally a license to print money
It is more for bragging rights than anything to have a team full of Team of the Year players and/or Icons.
Not all who play compete.
I suck at the game to be honest, I play vs the computer AI, but its nice to put together a team of your favorite players.
I calculated that a 90 Mbappe card i unpacked was worth in the range of 200$.
The really sick thing is that as soon as FIFA 21 comes out, all that is rendered useless.
My friend and I have found that the free card packs you can earn by reaching milestones in the game, and other daily objectives almost never give something of value. EA only wants you to spend spend spend.

 

[ShutUpPatrik]

I play pro evo online and have not spent a penny on this, it puts you with people at similar levels and I am not trying to be #1. looking at some of their teams they must have spent a load to get the players, I don't really care because they are still at a similar level to me.

Is Fifa the same?

More or less yeah.

This type of stuff has been around for a while going as far back as Team Fortress 2 (you could get hats to make your character stand out) and CS Go with their skins. But in both those cases it was cosmetic so it was at least not pay to win, even if it was just as much gambling.

 

[Airfixx]

Jim White banging on about the evils of gambling again.....

Fucking hypocrite.

 

[Darnswim]

Rare to find a video game that doesn’t have some form of pay to win in it these days

Wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t still the best part of 60 quid for a copy of a game in the first place

Usually games that aren't made by EA or Activision don't have a pay2win policy (the only game that is pay2win and isn't made by these 2 is Hearthstone). But yes, EA are notorious for making even games that you think that are impossible to be pay2win, pay2win. It's no surprise that they are in contention for "The worst company in US" every single year...