FIFA Ultimate Team Chemistry, Handicapping Glitch Investigated by EA Sports

EA Sports will investigate a suspected FIFA Ultimate Team (FUT) chemistry glitch that has been cause for much concern and complaints among players of the series.

Community manager Rob Hodson revealed on the FIFA forum that an investigation is ongoing and updates would be forthcoming, via Eurogamer's Wesley Yin-Poole:

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Thanks to the FUT community for raising awareness of a potential fitness and chemistry inconsistency in some FUT items. After hearing this, our teams were in over the weekend and continue to thoroughly investigate the information. We will keep you informed with updates from the investigation.

Our commitment to a fun, fair and secure experience in FIFA is ongoing, and as a community your feedback helps us achieve that goal. A special thanks for your continuous efforts across all channels.

"

Concerns from FIFA users emerged last week about a potentially long-running issue with FUT in which expensive cards did not perform as they should do.

It was claimed recently that gamers had "proved FUT includes handicapping—that is, teams comprised of highly rated players feel sluggish," per Yin-Poole.

The video below from Futhead TV summarised the main points:

The Ultimate Team mode has been included in every FIFA game since FIFA '09, and there have been suspicions of problems since its introduction, per Brenna Hillier on VG24/7. 

The main issue that has emerged recently has been with the chemistry stat on cards, which can ostensibly be improved by utilising players in their best position or alongside a countryman or team-mate.

Per Yin-Poole, "FUT players believe the most expensive cards in the game do not attribute this chemistry-related stat boost properly," thus cheaper cards that do attribute the chemistry boost properly can be better.

More specifically, the rare and valuable special-edition cards are believed to have a glitch.

Per Polygon's Owen S. Good, "one user posted [an] analysis in which common cards of top stars (called "day-one" cards) got the chemistry benefit and outperformed special-edition counterparts—meaning that the game does not apply chemistry to the Ultimate Team's most valuable players."

The accusation from FIFA users is that they could have lost out on a huge amount of money—not to mention time—over the years as the more expensive cards have not had the potential of the day-one alternatives.

The acknowledgement from EA Sports is a step in the right direction in terms of the potential issue being resolved, but there could yet be major controversy if users' fears are proved correct.