A lawsuit from France has been levied against Electronic Arts (EA), claiming FIFA 20‘s Ultimate Team is a form of gambling.
French newspaper L’Equipe (via SportBible) reports that Paris lawyers Karim Morand-Lahouazi, and Victor Zagury are suing EA over the Ultimate Team mechanics.
The Ultimate Team feature in FIFA 20 and FIFA 19 has players spending premium currency in exchange for lootboxes with the chance to obtain players with better stats and skills. Morand-Lahouazi and Zagury propose the mode is pay-to-win, and players can essentially gamble real money, with no guarantee on getting a particular card.
Zagury stated (as translated by SportBible) “In this game, everyone wants to have a dream team to go as far as possible. My client spent €600 in five months without ever getting a big player. The developers of this game mode have created an illusionary and particularly addictive system.”
“The more you pay, the more you have the possibility of getting big players. We believe that a gambling game has been integrated into this video game because buying packs is nothing more than a bet. It is the logic of a casino that has entered their homes.
Today, an 11- or 12-year-old teenager can, without any restriction, play FUT [FIFA Ultimate Team] and commit money because there is no parental control system in this mode. Belgium and the Netherlands have already taken up this issue.”
L’Equipe report the lawyers are hoping to discover how the odds of the lootboxes are calculated.
As aforementioned, EA removed the ability to buy FIFA Points from FIFA titles in Belgium, as their government began to take a stance against lootboxes, deeming it on par with gambling.
In the ongoing controversy surrounding lootboxes (started by outcry over EA’s Star Wars: Battlefront II), several governmental bodies within nations, and their politicians [1, 2, 3] threatened to take legal action against developers.
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