Madden streamers are “on strike” over in-game gambling odds

Some of the biggest streamers of the Driving me crazy Community have announced they are going on a “pack strike”, creating a hashtag and refusing to spend money on it madden 23 Ultimate Team mode until publisher Electronic Arts makes some changes.

What is Ultimate Team?

Both Madden and FIFA have hugely popular multiplayer game modes called Ultimate Team that allow users to create their own teams of all-time greats. The catch is that you need to receive your players via cards, and those cards are sold blind in sealed virtual packs, and those packs are paid for with real money.

As polygon reportthe streamers – who are for sports games like this one gigantic Part of the online community – created and are pushing the hashtag #packstrike Everyone Players, not just their content-creating peers, refuse to spend a dime on Ultimate Team until EA addresses their concerns.

Zirksee, speaking for both himself and “other creators in the community,” shared the group’s demands earlier today, saying that among other things, they demand: “better rerolls” and “better pack odds overall” when opening the more expensive player packs:

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Like I said, just this weekthere aren’t a ton of tweets, reviews, or comments that can make publishers retrace the extent to which they monetized major sports game series in 2022. The only thing that moves the needle at these companies is money, and thus the only way for angry players to withhold that money is to get their point across.

So it’s encouraging to see content creators mobilizing as a means of protest! Although it’s also insane to consider that a decade of turning sports games into shakedowns has normalized things to the point that people are “going on strike” that the modes aren’t being thrown away or made completely free considering that you have already spent $60 on the game. No, they just want the odds of their preferred game mode – a mode essentially based on gambling, something many governments are now legally investigating – to be changed to be a little more in their favour.

It’s like asking your jailer for fluffier pillows. It remains to be seen how successful this “strike” will be, of course, but if it has any effect on EA Sports I’d hope it at least sets a precedent for sports game fans – if they really are like it’s this constant nickel-and- Diming as sorry as they say they are – to take more drastic action.