FIFA 23 Ultimate Team players have hit out at developers EA after a secret and unexplained nerf to FUT Centurions Zlatan Ibrahimovic caused the card’s market price to plummet.
Update January 18, 08:00 EST / 13:00 GMT:
EA have released a hot fix and confirmed that the changes were made inadvertently. They tweeted: “We have addressed an issue where some of the Attributes were appearing differently for some Centurion Player Items.”
There has been no mention of compensation for players affected by the price fluctuations.
The original article is as follows.
FUT Centurions is the latest promo to hit FIFA 23, with a host of cards released to celebrate players to have hit a century milestone in one form or another.
Whether it’s 100 appearances for a certain club or 100 goals in a certain league, a massive variety of players across Europe have been recognized for their achievements in real-world football.
One card at the more expensive end of the promo is Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the world-renowned striker known for his skillfulness and continuing defiance of his age.
However, on January 18, it became clear that the FUT Centurions Ibrahimovic had received a monumental and unexplained nerf.
FUT Centurions Ibrahimovic given “unacceptable” secret nerf
The changes were highlighted on Reddit and Twitter. On the latter, FIFA YouTuber Zweback said: “Public Service Announcement. Ibra’s stamina just got nerfed from 85 to 61 and his agility from 85 to 76. WTAF??????????”
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A similar post on Reddit also found that his balance was reduced by 24 points, falling from 82 to 58.
No explanation for the changes has, at the time of writing, been provided by EA.
Speculation has suggested it’s a bug on EA’s end, while others have (without evidence) suggested that EA do this to a number of cards and have just accidentally made the changes visible on Ibrahimovic.
One said: “Someone messed up badly. These post-promo nerfs are supposed to stay hidden.”
Another described the changes as “unacceptable” and called for EA to address them rapidly.
Whatever the reasons for the changes, fans have been left incredibly unimpressed, with the card’s price plummeting from around 3 million coins to roughly 2.2 million at the time of writing. As a result, players who invested in Ibrahimovic or purchased him recently are nearly 1 million coins out of pocket.
Unfortunately, there is a precedent for such errors affecting the market. Back in October, a guaranteed tradeable FUT Hero pack was released for 25,000 coins, causing a huge slump in the market and many players to lose millions of coins. EA did not officially respond, but some support staff confirmed players would not be formally compensated.
Here’s hoping this is not a repeat and is just a small bug that can be quickly reverted.
