An internal Electronic Arts document has leaked, and in it, the main emphasis was on FUT (we’ll shorten FIFA Ultimate Team as such onwards).

CBC, the national public broadcaster of Canada, got a hold of a detailed, 54-page document, which has a quote: „FUT is the cornerstone and we are doing everything we can to drive players there.” What does FUT have? Loot boxes. The document was sent to CBC by a „gaming insider,” and it addresses the game’s performance so far, as well as the company’s plans.

There is a page in it that is called Five Things You Need To Know. We have previously quoted the fourth point in the previous paragraph, but the third one says that the players will be „incentivized to convert” (to FUT) throughout the summer. On another page, titled Turning Up The Heat, Electronic Arts bluntly states that „all roads lead to FUT,” laying out a strategy to „drive excitement and funnel players towards FUT from other modes.” The insider has sent this document to CBC due to research linking loot boxes to gambling, proceedings in various markets around regulating loot boxes as gambling, and numerous lawsuits over the practice.

„For years … they’ve been able to act with a layer of plausible deniability. Yet in their internal documents, they’re saying, ‘This is our goal. We want people driven to the card pack mode.’ I don’t know why anyone would ever put that in print at the company. It’s getting harder and harder to defend what is very obviously unregulated gambling,” the insider told CBC.

An EA representative told CBC that the document is „viewed without context,” and the interpretations of its contents „are misinformed.” CBC requested to clarify these assertions, only to not get an answer. It’s purely about money: in 2020, Electronic Arts reported that its Ultimate Team modes represented 27% of its total revenues (roughly 1.5 billion dollars…).

Source: Gamesindustry