FIFA 23 devs apologize after accidental nerf to four promo cards

Ryan Lemay
How to juggle the ball in FIFA 23

EA Sports apologized for incorrectly lowering the attributes of four FIFA 23 players and resolved the issue.

Reddit and Twitter quickly jumped on the news of FIFA 23 FUT Centurion card, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, receiving an unexplained nerf. The Swedish striker’s stamina decreased from 85 to 61, his agility went down to 76 from 85, and his balance was reduced by 24 points.

Ibrahimovic is always a fan-favorite player in FIFA, yet his FUT Centurion card price plummeted from over four million to just about three after the nerf. EA released a hotfix on January 18, confirming the changes were made inadvertently. However, the developers failed to mention compensation for players affected by the price fluctuations.

EA’s lack of clarity served as a breach of trust to some FIFA 23 community members, as they questioned if other cards secretly get nerfed behind the scenes. On January 19, the developers addressed other cards, which suffered from a similar issue.

Ibrahimovic FUT Centurions card on FIFA 23 background
Ibrahimovic received an inexplicable nerf to his stats.

EA addresses incorrectly lowering FIFA 23 attributes

EA announced: “An unintended issue lowered some Attributes for 4 Player Items in FUT following the most recent Price Range update.”

Rulebreakers Ribery and Dzeko, Road to the Knockouts Aubameyang, and Winter Wildcards Jesus were all dealt with inadvertent nerfs.

FIFA 23 streamer Nick28T responded, “Insane that these are issues, but we appreciate the honest communication and swift fixes. Keep it up.”

Unfortunately, there is a precedent for such errors affecting the market. Back in October, a guaranteed tradeable FUT Hero pack was released for 25,000 coins, causing a huge slump in the market and many players to lose millions of coins. EA did not officially respond, but some support staff confirmed players would not be formally compensated

A second community member claimed, “Only correcting it because you were caught out. It was intentional.”

FIFA 23 players are losing patience with mistakes costing them hard-earned coins in FUT.

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About The Author

Ryan is a former games writer for Dexerto. Ryan graduated from Ithaca College in 2021 with a sports media degree and a journalism minor. He gained experience as a writer for the Morning Times newspaper before joining Dexerto as a games writer. He mainly writes about first-person shooters, including Call of Duty and Battlefield, but he is also a big FIFA fan.