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FIFA 13 publisher Electronic Arts responded to a BBC Watchdog report on glitches in the game yesterday, explaining why issues persist and why developer EA Canada isn't able to fix them all immediately.
Watchdog, an investigative BBC program, reported on FIFA 13 issues such as crashes shortly after the game launched in late September, and recently followed up with two FIFA 13 players frustrated by continuing problems. A teenage boy named Semir spent £20 on virtual currency to buy FIFA Ultimate Team card packs, but the cards disappeared shortly after he purchased them. The other person featured in the Watchdog report, a young man named Alec, has encountered game crashes, as well as an invisible ball and players. Both said they had tried to contact EA but received no response.
EA Sports wrote to Watchdog and posted the response on the FIFA 13 website. In the open letter, the company emphasized its commitment to "not only address issues and necessary fixes to improve the FIFA experience as quickly and effectively as possible, but deliver new services and new content all season long." According to EA, the problems can't be fixed all at once because the company endeavors to deliver fixes in a way that doesn't disrupt the FIFA 13 experience with an extended server outage, or ruin other aspects of the game.
EA did acknowledge both players' FIFA 13 issues, saying that the developers are "actively addressing customer issues related to transactions in the game that have not been executed properly," and are aware of "rare occurrences where the ball in the game does not appear" that they continue to investigate. The company also pointed out that the first FIFA 13 patch, which launched last month; according to EA, reports of crashing and other issues have dropped by "more than half" since then.
While EA did not apologize for the issues, it did promise to investigate Semir's and Alex's problems with FIFA 13, and said the developers "will be in contact directly." All the other players looking for bug fixes will have to wait until the next patch.
