EA SPORTS have made an official response to the recent report on FIFA 13 on Watchdog.
The BBC consumer affairs program, Watchdog, followed up on a number of complaints of bugs in EA SPORTS’ flagship game including grievances from 14 year old Semir from Suffolk regarding occurrences of an invisible ball and invisible players making the game “rather frustrating”.
Semir also spent £20 of his own pocket money on FIFA Points to buy gold packs to find better players improve his Ultimate Team but the next day those players were gone.
A student from London, Alec, also reported a bug in FIFA 13 Career Mode where the game would crash and freeze at the same date in the calender every time he waited for the next game to load turning his screen black.
Despite EA SPORTS being extremely active on both their forums and on social media both Semir and Alec say that they feel that their complaints were ignored by the company.
EA SPORTS’ Official Response To Watchdog
The following is EA SPORTS’ official response sent to Watchdog Producer, Helen Collins.
“Thank you for the opportunity to provide information related to FIFA 13 in the UK and your upcoming segment.
FIFA 13 has been the most successful launch of a sports videogame in history and the biggest videogame launch of 2012 to date. The game sold more than 4.5 million copies in its first week around the world, including more than 1 million copies in the UK alone. Since its launch in late September, it has been the top selling videogame in the UK. Just as important, the game has been universally praised for its quality and innovation, as evidenced by the volume of positive reviews from the leading media and gaming outlets in the UK. For many years, FIFA has been recognised as not only the biggest sports game on the planet, but as the videogame franchise that sets the benchmark for quality, innovation, and connected online services.
The quality of the FIFA game is delivered by one of the most experienced and passionate development teams in the industry. In addition, our game goes through a rigorous, year-long testing process that logs thousands upon thousands of hours of evaluation to ensure a high quality experience at launch and all season long.
Our fans have engaged with FIFA 13 in record numbers. On any given day, more than 1 million online game sessions of FIFA are played by our fans in the UK. But as with any product or online service with such a high level of traffic and popularity, there will be some circumstances where fans experience challenges or issues. And as with any online service, our game is also dependent on many other factors, such as online access and availability at the customer’s location, to ensure the best experience.
We are constantly listening to our fans and asking for their feedback to help us identify issues and assist us in prioritising the improvements to our game. We do this via our social media channels like Facebook and Twitter, our FIFA online forums, and our Customer Experience team. We encourage all our fans to follow us on Twitter or Like our Facebook page so that they get the most up-to-date information. We provide transparent and frequent updates to our fans via these channels, such as this item from last week which provides extensive detail about the improvements and fixes we are delivering for FIFA 13:
http://www.ea.com/soccer/news/fifa-13-title-update-01
In summary, we have already delivered improvements to FIFA 13 to address issues in online connectivity, addressed key issues in game modes like Career Mode and FIFA Ultimate Team, and are actively addressing customer issues related to transactions in the game that have not been executed properly, such as missing coins or FIFA Ultimate Team items. Since we released a major update to the game on October 19, we’ve seen reported game crashes and other issues drop by more than half.
We have received reports from our fans of rare occurrences where the ball in the game does not appear. Our team continues to investigate these rare events and we will communicate directly with our fans once we have more information.
Our commitment is to not only address issues and necessary fixes to improve the FIFA experience as quickly and effectively as possible, but deliver new services and new content all season long. The process of improving the game experience for our fans is a constant one, and our team continues to work on additional improvements that we will implement and communicate in the coming days and weeks ahead. We know that we have significantly improved the FIFA experience for our fans in recent days, and we fully expect that to continue as we develop and implement additional improvements and fixes.
We understand that some fans may wonder why we can’t fix all the known issues at once. That’s a fair question and the answer isn’t quite as simple. We are delivering improvements and fixes in such a way to ensure the millions of people playing FIFA 13 do not experience undue or overly lengthy network/server outages, that title updates and other improvements are done to a high quality, and that we’re confident the changes will improve the FIFA 13 experience for everyone.
We look at all enquiries an individual basis and are investigating the two cases you have brought to our attention, and will be in contact with them directly. Once again, thank you for the opportunity to provide this above information, and we welcome Watchdog to come over to the studio in Vancouver to see all the processes and procedures in place to ensure we’re delivering the best game possible for consumers. Please do not hesitate to contact us for any clarification.
EA SPORTS”
Tell Us Your Experiences
Have you personally experienced any of the bugs in FIFA 13. Have you had any dealings with EA SPORTS customer support? Tell us about your experiences in the comments below!
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I purchased 2200 fifa points in ultimate team for 1280 microsoft points and the microsoft points were deducted and fifa points not received. I spoke to microsoft and they said as downloadable content they cannot help no further as is in ea’s marketplace not theirs. So upon contacting EA on the 23rd of October 2012 i explained everything i was told my case would be sent to studio team and i should get a respinse within 14 days. Few days later i received and email from EA saying i have not been in touch for a while and to contact them regarding my case. When i did tbis gave.my case number and i was asked to explain the situation all over again so i did. When this was done i was advised again that would be sent to the studio team for resolution and later that evening received an another email from ea to confirm if was missing players or missing fifa points when logged bk online i had to explain yet again and the advisor was very cheeky so i requested to speak to a manager to further handle my request. Spoke to the manager explained that he was the 5th person spoken too over the space of 7 days and i was not happy as dis not regard this as a customer service. I was told its not to do with customer service and i will be contacted in 7 days. So last year i had an issue with missing coins and had contact with Kenneth Benedict who i have now received email from him to advise that the studio teams tools are not operating and they have no estimated time for when this will be sorted. Still no fifa points no refund of microsoft points EA are a law onto themselfs. And strange thing is you are not able to contact studio team and everytime you speak to someone on live chat through EA Help website you never get a straight answer they are theifs. Disgusted with the whole company.
I agree that there were some bumps in the road after FIFA 13 launched, and I’m talking about people losing their money (Microsoft points) and/or all the FUT player/packs they acquired. That really is terrible for those people and I’m glad I wasn’t one of them.
As for the UT servers going down frequently, well most of that was in the pre-release period in the week leading up to the launch. I consider that sort of a beta period so I don’t think it’s fair to really cry about that too much. Also, even big sites like Google and Twitter go down sometimes. It’s natural.
It seems like the group of people who really got screwed (and lost lots of time/real money etc) is pretty small. But let’s say for the sake of argument, that even if 2000 people all over the world really had LOTS of major problems, that’s only 0.027% of the 7.4 million copies sold. That means that 99.973% of people did NOT have “significant” issues with the game, and I think that’s a pretty respectable number. I’ve played other games that have WAY more bugs and problems.
Again, I don’t want to make light of the annoyances and problems some people experienced, just wanted to put it into perspective.
Andy, that’s nonsense. A quick glance at the EA forums will show you that there are far more than 0.027% of gamers complaining. And for every 1 that posts a complaint on the forums, there are probably another 3 that don’t. Everyone I know who bought FIFA has experienced at least 1 of the following bugs:
– Invisible balls/players
– Ultimate Team packs/cards disappearing
– Career mode freezing
– Pro Club appearances/goals not being recorded and therefore not counting towards career progression
I personally had an issue with Ultimate Team and after lots of unhelpful exchanges, I wrote a letter to the President of EA Sports. Whereupon I received an immediate response from a senior customer service rep who fixed my problems.
Of course, now that one’s fixed, I’ve discovered another bug, to do with my created Pro never appearing under his correct name. I’m told that this is due to the player’s name breaking the EA profanity rules, and I’m going to change it tonight to see if that solves the problem. The name I’m using that’s causing the problem? Jimmy. And there are reports on the forums of ‘Nigel’ or ‘Arnie’ not being accepted screen names.
Don’t defend EA. They released an appalling product, full of bugs, and 6 weeks after release, they’ve still only scratched the surface of fixing them. They deserve all the bad press they are getting, and they’re playing right into the hands of Pro Evolution Soccer.
Stupid response they wrote, if all of us would have known about all the freaking annoying bugs and erros the game had, not many people would’ve bought this!
They sold out a game that was not ready, not tested and they should be sued! i havent benn able to play wor a month!
We keep buying beta games, they keep releasing beta games. Until we as a group stop paying full price, it will never end. EA once were one of the greatest publishers, now their reputation is as bad as AT&T in the States.
Personally I think EA are a shower of bandits. I have experienced (in no particular order) Invisible ball, terrible lag meaning my game freezes and my online opponent has waltzed past my defence, my defence deciding to run away from an attacking player thus allowing a free run and pass for a sweaty goal, various freezes on menus and in game, UT being a farce. All of this on servers in the UK, Germany and my native Slovenia.
UT is my main gripe, I hate the disconnections that lose me contracts and lower my future coins by THEIR OWN servers being inefficient. On marketplace I bid on 4 Hulks 2 days ago then the online app crashed. I returned later to find I had won all 4 Hulks for fees of 400, 500, 1200 and 5000 coins…so some poor gamers have lost out on fair auctions due to EA’s failures. So I took to the forums to see if anyone else had experienced similar things, only for my post to be pulled by EA 15 minutes after I put it up!!
Scritpting is another joke, how many of you have played your opponent off the park, 10, 15, 20 shots….they have one and score. The CPU is the worst, between 40 – 45 minutes and 80 – whenever it decides to stop playing, CPU becomes invincible, I cannot tackle, match the pace or save the shots and it always scores. EA claim scripting is non existent. Online games and CPU regularly score with the next attack after I have gone ahead/pulled level etc…this is not normal, certainly not on the regularity that EA would provide, this along with pace abuse, tiny players outjumping giant centre halfs and goalkeepers that appear to perform like seals and flap at balls.
I try to give EA a chance but I always end up getting a kick in the teeth.
Apologies all, rant over.
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I paid for fifa points still have not received them !!!!! was on fone for 42 mins something cost 5.49 now cost me near 10 now I am on phone chasing up this case quick enough to take my money not quick enough to sort out now on hold 13 mins
Why does this game always crash and corrupt my files on my computer, sick to death of the game doing it, it’s causing the console major problems by having to turn it off wrongly, are ea sports gonna give me a new play station when fifa eventually fries the thing because of its faults, absolutely fed up of invisible balls, players, computer crashing because of how poorly it’s been put together, you earn millions and can’t even do your job right, if someone makes mistakes in a normal job there sacked, ea sports you need to get your heads together and give us a game that works, and stop counting the money you make off hard working people of this world, very unhappy customer your games awful I will never buy it again, I’ve played pro evolution for the past 7 years not a problem, convert to fifa for 1 season and your games a mess, sort it out robbing decent people, you should be dragged in front of a court and charged for charging people for a product that has endless faults, in my eyes you are thieves and are scum sending such a poor quality game on the market hope someone thieves off you see how it feels, good luck on the next production of the game you all need it gang of losers.
Oh and I was on the phone for 36 minutes and your silly complaints department put the phone down you are a bunch of jokes the lot of u.
i played an friendly match and there wer no spectator’s sitting then to there was a lot of cheering for the home team. how is this possible???
Just reading everyones complaints. Is it worthwhile me getting in touch with them? So many times the connection has collapsed and its been important games. Last night in final of tournemant were u win 2000 coins and a gold pack. in extra time drawing both me and the other player both got kicked out the game first thing that come up was 25 xp for winning, next thing it comes up dnf. i checked to see if i recieved coins or pack nope. i contact my fellow player he has had same problem. Is it ea trying to make u buy more packs or is this a legit problem. i dont mind buying them here and there but i would like a fair chance of winning them as well. plus this lowers my coin earnings because of there server not my internet.
i worked hard to gain coins on ultimate team and even spend £80+ of my money on packs i placed a bid on a player (hazard) 64.500 coins the money was taken no player given! i cant find a contact number anywhere for the ea sports customer services, i emailed them and no reply day light robbery
I purchased some DLC for fifa13 on the PC and it does not work. Bought fifa credits so I could import teams in to career mode from the creation centre,Creation centre always says there is a fault and it cant download anything. Same problems that fifa12 had. I cant use the content i pay for , read through forums seems lots of other people have this problem as well and no fix and EA just ignore them .Take a look at this thread
http://forum.ea.com/uk/posts/list/1926752.page
My 14yr old son has had his account blocked Dec 13′ our emails have been ignored, he’s spent £80 in the last 6 months to build his ultimate teams plus the £40 cost on the game from his pocket money that he’s saved and birthday money!
Back in July his account got hacked and had over 80,000 coins and players wiped from his account we logged it with EA and we’re still waiting for an outcome.
It’s disgraceful that EA sports are happy to take children’s money then ultimately block them and ignore them.
V Hookings, Swindon, UK