A class action lawsuit over EA’s alleged use of scripting in FIFA was filed back in November, and has now been withdrawn. The publisher has once again asserted that this tech is not being used to any nefarious end in its football games, and after providing technical details to the plaintiffs, that lawsuit has been withdrawn.
For years, FIFA Ultimate Team players have asserted that they’re being manipulated by a mysterious, in-game algorithm that would make the game harder when they’re winning and easier when they’re losing. That sort of thing is pretty common in videogames, but the kicker is the idea that it was being used in a mode fuelled by microtransactions.
EA has repeatedly asserted that it does not make use of any such technology in Ultimate Team. This became the subject of a class action lawsuit in November 2020, where the plaintiffs alleged that the publisher’s patented ‘dynamic difficulty adjustment’ – typically referred to as ‘scripting’ or ‘momentum’ by FIFA fans – was being used to juice Ultimate Team microtransaction purchases.
Now, that suit has been withdrawn after EA provided “detailed technical information and access to speak with our engineers, all of which confirmed (again) that there is no DDA or scripting in Ultimate Team modes.” The publisher confirms in its statement (via Eurogamer) that while it does hold a patent for the DDA tech, “that technology never was in FIFA, Madden, or NHL, and never will be.”
The statement continues: “We would not use DDA technology to give players an advantage or disadvantage in online multiplayer modes in any of our games and we absolutely do not have it in FIFA, Madden, or NHL.”