EA addresses EA Sports FC 24 "£700 Messi" mistake

I can’t decide if I know less about soccer or EA Sports FC, so please bear with me on this one…

A small amount of very lucky EA Sports FC 24 players were treated to an in-game version of Lionel Messi that has a pretty serious real-world value, and it’s all because of a mistake on EA’s part.

EA Sports FC 24 had an in-game challenge that was supposed to offer a very small chance at an incredibly rare Lionel Messi card, but it turns out the opposite happened. Instead of the card being rare, players had an extremely good chance of snagging the card for their collection. This mistake was noticed within a half hour of the challenge going live, which led to EA pulling the plug. (h/t VGC)

EA says that in the time the bugged challenge was live, an estimated 0.7% of Ultimate team players obtained the TOTY Messi item. EA understands this caused frustration within the Ultimate Team Community and apologized for the hiccup. Moving forward, EA has revealed plans for how the situation will be handled:

• Players who completed this SBC while it was available will keep their rewards
• The SBC will not be returning as originally designed