FIFA 22 launched less than a month ago and was heavily marketed as the first true next-generation version of FIFA. However, players had found a glitch in the FUT Champions game mode, resulting in a big controversy that has now forced EA to take action.
FUT Champions, also known as Weekend League, is the main competitive game mode of FIFA Ultimate Team. In previous years, players had to play 30 matches over a weekend, but in FIFA 22 they have to go through qualifying rounds on weekdays, before playing a maximum of 20 matches on weekends. Points are earned for every win or loss which determines the rewards for that particular player. As the rewards for doing well in FUT Champions are extremely lucrative, it comes as no surprise that some players had used an exploit in order to win more games.
This glitch allowed FIFA 22 players to quit a game without taking a loss, resulting in it not being counted as one of the 20 FUT Champions matches. EA had previously confirmed that the glitch has been fixed, and has now detailed the punishment given out to players that had used it. This information comes from the Twitter account EA uses to communicate with the FIFA audience. It states that over 30k active accounts have been found guilty of using this exploit, and EA has suspended them for 7 days. This prevents these players from taking part in the next FUT Champions Finals competition.
A 7-day ban doesn’t seem all that long, but it does prevent those players from earning one full week’s rewards. They will potentially miss out on packs worth hundreds of thousands of FUT coins, which sounds fair as they were able to get the best possible rewards last week.
Surprisingly, the replies to this Tweet include images from angry fans who have been banned for 1000 days. While this massive ban may be an error, it is also likely that these players had been previously banned for some other offense, which has now added to their punishment. Regardless, it is not a good look for what EA considers to be the #1 best-selling video game.
While glitches and gameplay exploits are present in FIFA ever year, being able to quit a match without it being counted as a FUT Champions game probably has not happened before. Earlier this year, EA had also handed out bans to players for buying extremely rare cards in FIFA 21 with real money.
FIFA 22 is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.