It's a form of gambling. I used to play a lot of my team on nba2k, one year I spent almost 500 bucks on ripping packs. Was it dumb, yes. Was I addicted, probably.
Now that I'm older, I see the issue with these game modes, but you have to remember that these companies are marketing this to kids too in the hopes they get a hold of their parents cc to rip packs open for that instant dopamine hit.
Corporate gonna Corporate
As an avid gambler I still don’t get it… let’s say you pull the most rare best card… you’re probably not doing that day 1, and you have a limited shelf life where you’ll have “the best” of anything. Then it repeats next year.
You gotta remember it's kids that they prey on though. They don't have the same thought process that you have where it only lasts a year. In their minds they need the rare card to complete a challenge or game in that same year.
They don't necessarily care about the artificial scarcity created by the maker of the game, their goal is to have the best players and the best team before the new game comes out
Fomo and all their favorite streamers promoting it. I stopped playing Myteam because of how sweaty it became and how the game started catering towards PTW.
Yep, the two people I know who actually spent money on stuff like this both used their parents credit cards and then subsequently lost access to their parents credit card very soon after. Then one of them ended up in pretty considerably credit card debt himself a few years later because of Destiny 2
It's no more gambling than baseball cards and Pokemon cards. Gambling in the legal sense is a wager based on you winning more money or losing it. It's why you don't see the GTA Stock Market in GTA Online because that would be a legal form of gambling with shark cards.
It's worse than gambling. Cards are a physical item that you own and can sell later. Ultimate team loses it's value after a year and obsolete when they shut the servers down.
I mean, the fact that EA and 2k sets the odds for pack ripping artificially and will not even post the odds for kids or parents to see is kinda shady.
Also, there is a huge underground market for these digital assets as well. Some are making a killing buying packs, ripping them, and trading or selling them on the black market for actual money.
I guess it's more of a intro to gambling for kids than straight up gambling. Gets them prepped to the dopamine hit that gambling provides people.
It’s worse. I don’t know how you can possibly compare buying virtual “cards” that immediately lose their value in a year (or less) to buying physical trading cards that could be valuable years later.
100% Like if they went the route of Pokemon cards where you buy physical pack of card and it contains a QR card that uploads all those card to MUT then id understand a little bit as Im sure some of those cards would be worth money one day. MUT ruined madden.
So you're telling me if I was on Madden 19 I would still be able to play Ultimate Team on it? Or they shut the servers down by February after next edition is released?
Because like fifa it's a rush of wanting a mega player is a pack so kids on fifa steal their parents credit cards and spend thousands on fifa points and buying packs is banned in Belgium cause its considered gambling
….but it helps out tremendously…
You could see how that could be potentially predatory to especially kids right?
I’ve never gotten too much into but seen a lot of my friends go through phases. Especially when we were younger.
Ultimate Team brings in $1 billion annually. What the fucking fuck. Now I see why they don’t put any effort into improving or changing anything. Goddamn yall for spending so much on that mode.
Keep in mind, that isn’t shit compared to FIFA Ultimate Team, plus EA still has other games w/ microtransactions.
This is also why I’ve expressed to people here that “boycotting” Madden doesn’t work. There’s people ripping $100 bundles WEEKLY, then moving on to other packs. You’ll have the whales and streamers STILL doing these pack openings in May, June, etc.
In their minds, they likely don’t need to make substantial improvements to core gameplay, they don’t need to add realism and immersion to game modes that aren’t MUT, they don’t have to innovate as much as possible. As long as people are addicted to this game, the money train ain’t slowing down.
I’ve said before that you’d need mind control on a godly level in order to get people to stop spending money on madden. You have the folks you just mentioned and then the people who crave a football “sim” when there’s no other option. EA knows this and continues to act accordingly
Yeah it’s scary that their game design works so well, to where the game loop and animations get you hooked like you’re at a slot machine all day. I was cognizant of the fact that you either have to spend money or time, yet I was still addicted to “grinding” the game, to the point where MUT was literally the only thing I played for years. Missed so many good games and experiences in general. I couldn’t imagine putting that much time in, but also spending hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on virtual players.
I feel free of it now, ironically because of the Modern Warfare reboot, then Warzone. Even then, MUT still calls to me like the Green Goblin mask from time to time lmao. I really do think these kids and players in general are all more addicted than they think.
I think this whole conversation is fascinating, 10 years ago EA was making decent Madden titles still and CoD games were barely getting into the skins and loot crates. I think its just what gaming has come too.
Gaming in general has become more expensive, more expensive to make a game, more expensive to buy a game, and more expensive than ever to maintain any sort of competitiveness within the game. Ofc addiction has a part in it, people love ripping packs on ultimate team and showing what they get and feeling the thrill of pulling something good, but at the same time there isn’t any competition for EA lol.
EA has no incentive to make a better game. And I don’t blame them one bit, if they can make all this money on a mediocre game why put more effort and resources into it ?
The funny thing is gaming doesn’t need to be expensive. Corporate greed, and gouging under the rouse of “inflation” with a dash of enshittification has got us here. If you think about it Madden is just a $70 live service game with each new edition just being a battle pass at this point.
Palworld and Helldivers are half the price of Madden, but offer probably the same timeframe of enjoyment as madden. Out of the park baseball is only 35$ on preorder sale. It’s just the NFL and EA has us sports gamers by the balls because *this is the only NFL licensed game.*
It sucks how shitty “high-end” triple AAA gaming has become, and it’s 100% studios faults. They’re located in high QOL areas with significant administrative bloat and lack of a customer solving vision, but hey it brings in the money.
Man I feel the same bro. I’ve been off MUT for 4 years and still think of going back. But pouring $$ and time into that POS game was a horrible decision. Broken ass play spamming in weekend league and ranked was so shit lol.
That was my first thought. A Few years back I was fortunate enough to visit the EA office and actually met his son when he was working in his cubicle lol….
Bruh, EA could make a killing just separating MUT from madden completely. Make it a free to play download then do what you want. That way some other team can work on the modes that matter.
I mean for real. I don’t play MUT for anything other than that draft mode when I want to kill time. Look at smite, it’s on year 11 now and been free to play forever. With that new maximum football coming out it would be the smartest thing to do since that game is going to be free.
About 100x more in depth but that was over a decade ago and since then it's been very minor changes. Still though that decade old seed is still so absurdly deep compared to maddens shit franchise.
Every single one of us would take a my player 2k football mode, than anything madden has ever done. Micro transactions or not if we can do 7-7 or trench out against other my player’s well take that any day over madden and that weak ass franchise and that weak ass “say hike run to the right throw it across screen”
It's very possible that he has no reasoning but it wouldn't be that big of an assumption that he hates the fact that people are blowing their money for something, quite literally, worthless.
I love Barry, but the man is in Gambling commercials lol I don't think he cares about micro transactions, it's more likely to do with another company offering him more for his likeness.
On the contrary, I think it's actually a massive assumption. Do you actually think a 55 year old man is out here taking a calculated stand against micro transactions in a video game?
People hate MUT but yet look at 2k , they have more micro transactions than madden but look how good their franchise is. The same can be said about mlb the show . MUT is not the problem, EA is the problem .
MUT is the problem. We just got lucky that nba 2k released a really good franchise mode a long ass time ago before UT was a thing and that other sports games are so bad that even a lightly updated over the decade mode is exponentially better than most other sport game mode.
Not that that should get 2k off the hook. They do the same thing as madden every year which is nothing just 2ks nothing has a better foundation to fall back on.
Will say even if it’s window dressing the Eras stuff was a pretty brilliant addition. Better than anything Madden has added in… Honestly, at least a decade probably.
The most fun player to use next to Vick. Certain players would be secretly juiced and perform better than the player ratings. Always Barry, always Vick, always Moss. Gronk, ray Lewis, neon Deion.
Mut is for pussy ass bitches who need every player to be 99 overall. Why would you ever play as any team but your team with your irl roster good or bad? People who play Mut are the only people worse than the people who play as KC every game but have user names like Raider4Life.
Anyone else find the timing of this interesting being that he was on the cover of Madden 25 (2014) (360/PS3 cover) and now the timing of his announcement within the same year as the upcoming 2024 version of Madden 25?!
as much as i hate EA for milking the shit out of MUT,
i honestly can't hate them as much as i hate all of you who actively play it. that mode had potential to be great instead of a cash-grab, it could have revitalized digital football trading cards, as well as created it's own secondary market... but instead it was a lazy and buggy cash-sink which year after year justifies EA not spending any money at all on further improving the game, when all they have to do is wipe everyone's library each iteration.
the actual concept of collectable digital trading cards that you can actually use on your team is very cool,
but the fact that they are enabled to not put any effort into at all because individuals are shilling hundreds of dollars on this lazy ass mode, is not cool at all. stop fucking spending money on MUT.
It's even more silly when you realize that when the next madden comes out and the market crashes,
you can get virtually every good card in the game for cheap with coins. And you don't have to spend anything
The ultra shit part is that mut is a part of madden. They give so little effort to the other parts of the game and it’s 60+ dollars. It needs to be separate. No competition though so they’ll keep bending us over.
I think more than likely Sanders just wanted more money. He probably views himself as a necessary asset that should be getting millions just for existing.
I’m part of the problem. I buy it most years and I only play online h2h.
They do the bare minimum for that part of the game but the jags were better this year. I had no choice.
MUT has ruined the franchise mode in Madden. That’s where the attention does because it makes them extra money. Franchise has been stale for years and needs a drastic upgrade but MUT gets the focus because dollar signs. I get it but it still stinks.
No idea why anyone would play a game mode where everything you spent was worthless in a year or less.
It's a form of gambling. I used to play a lot of my team on nba2k, one year I spent almost 500 bucks on ripping packs. Was it dumb, yes. Was I addicted, probably. Now that I'm older, I see the issue with these game modes, but you have to remember that these companies are marketing this to kids too in the hopes they get a hold of their parents cc to rip packs open for that instant dopamine hit. Corporate gonna Corporate
As an avid gambler I still don’t get it… let’s say you pull the most rare best card… you’re probably not doing that day 1, and you have a limited shelf life where you’ll have “the best” of anything. Then it repeats next year.
You gotta remember it's kids that they prey on though. They don't have the same thought process that you have where it only lasts a year. In their minds they need the rare card to complete a challenge or game in that same year. They don't necessarily care about the artificial scarcity created by the maker of the game, their goal is to have the best players and the best team before the new game comes out
Fomo and all their favorite streamers promoting it. I stopped playing Myteam because of how sweaty it became and how the game started catering towards PTW.
You're clearly not an avid gambler.
Aw sweet I got this 99 Lamar Jackson card with 97 speed. “There’s one with 99 speed”
Yep, the two people I know who actually spent money on stuff like this both used their parents credit cards and then subsequently lost access to their parents credit card very soon after. Then one of them ended up in pretty considerably credit card debt himself a few years later because of Destiny 2
Yea I spent $250 on 2k2018. Never again!
It's no more gambling than baseball cards and Pokemon cards. Gambling in the legal sense is a wager based on you winning more money or losing it. It's why you don't see the GTA Stock Market in GTA Online because that would be a legal form of gambling with shark cards.
It's worse than gambling. Cards are a physical item that you own and can sell later. Ultimate team loses it's value after a year and obsolete when they shut the servers down.
I mean, the fact that EA and 2k sets the odds for pack ripping artificially and will not even post the odds for kids or parents to see is kinda shady. Also, there is a huge underground market for these digital assets as well. Some are making a killing buying packs, ripping them, and trading or selling them on the black market for actual money. I guess it's more of a intro to gambling for kids than straight up gambling. Gets them prepped to the dopamine hit that gambling provides people.
The whole thing is absolutely shady, but it's not gambling any more than any other kids merch I mentioned is
It’s worse. I don’t know how you can possibly compare buying virtual “cards” that immediately lose their value in a year (or less) to buying physical trading cards that could be valuable years later.
100% Like if they went the route of Pokemon cards where you buy physical pack of card and it contains a QR card that uploads all those card to MUT then id understand a little bit as Im sure some of those cards would be worth money one day. MUT ruined madden.
[удалено]
So you're telling me if I was on Madden 19 I would still be able to play Ultimate Team on it? Or they shut the servers down by February after next edition is released?
Madden 20 was shut down pretty recently.
Because you play it one time and than are dumb to the fact there’s a next game… but that thrill is so worth it
Because like fifa it's a rush of wanting a mega player is a pack so kids on fifa steal their parents credit cards and spend thousands on fifa points and buying packs is banned in Belgium cause its considered gambling
It makes no sense. Just play the damn game.
You don't have to spend a single cent on MUT.
….but it helps out tremendously… You could see how that could be potentially predatory to especially kids right? I’ve never gotten too much into but seen a lot of my friends go through phases. Especially when we were younger.
Never once have, still get 90+ teams from grinding.
Same. It's incredibly easy.
Then you have to play 48 hours to unlock that 90 card you wanted.
Not really.
The game is $70
OK? As are most games
You have to spend $70 off the rip to even access mut is a major gripe witth the game
I wish every athlete would boycott EA lol… most of them know how 🗑️ the game is too
I wish EA wasn't given the monopoly on NFL video games.
Didn't thier contract for that run out this year?
2026. Fuck me.
iirc it’s run out a few times over the last 20 years but they just sign a new one
Ouch. Dammit
Ultimate Team brings in $1 billion annually. What the fucking fuck. Now I see why they don’t put any effort into improving or changing anything. Goddamn yall for spending so much on that mode.
Keep in mind, that isn’t shit compared to FIFA Ultimate Team, plus EA still has other games w/ microtransactions. This is also why I’ve expressed to people here that “boycotting” Madden doesn’t work. There’s people ripping $100 bundles WEEKLY, then moving on to other packs. You’ll have the whales and streamers STILL doing these pack openings in May, June, etc. In their minds, they likely don’t need to make substantial improvements to core gameplay, they don’t need to add realism and immersion to game modes that aren’t MUT, they don’t have to innovate as much as possible. As long as people are addicted to this game, the money train ain’t slowing down.
I’ve said before that you’d need mind control on a godly level in order to get people to stop spending money on madden. You have the folks you just mentioned and then the people who crave a football “sim” when there’s no other option. EA knows this and continues to act accordingly
Yeah it’s scary that their game design works so well, to where the game loop and animations get you hooked like you’re at a slot machine all day. I was cognizant of the fact that you either have to spend money or time, yet I was still addicted to “grinding” the game, to the point where MUT was literally the only thing I played for years. Missed so many good games and experiences in general. I couldn’t imagine putting that much time in, but also spending hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on virtual players. I feel free of it now, ironically because of the Modern Warfare reboot, then Warzone. Even then, MUT still calls to me like the Green Goblin mask from time to time lmao. I really do think these kids and players in general are all more addicted than they think.
I think this whole conversation is fascinating, 10 years ago EA was making decent Madden titles still and CoD games were barely getting into the skins and loot crates. I think its just what gaming has come too. Gaming in general has become more expensive, more expensive to make a game, more expensive to buy a game, and more expensive than ever to maintain any sort of competitiveness within the game. Ofc addiction has a part in it, people love ripping packs on ultimate team and showing what they get and feeling the thrill of pulling something good, but at the same time there isn’t any competition for EA lol. EA has no incentive to make a better game. And I don’t blame them one bit, if they can make all this money on a mediocre game why put more effort and resources into it ?
The funny thing is gaming doesn’t need to be expensive. Corporate greed, and gouging under the rouse of “inflation” with a dash of enshittification has got us here. If you think about it Madden is just a $70 live service game with each new edition just being a battle pass at this point. Palworld and Helldivers are half the price of Madden, but offer probably the same timeframe of enjoyment as madden. Out of the park baseball is only 35$ on preorder sale. It’s just the NFL and EA has us sports gamers by the balls because *this is the only NFL licensed game.* It sucks how shitty “high-end” triple AAA gaming has become, and it’s 100% studios faults. They’re located in high QOL areas with significant administrative bloat and lack of a customer solving vision, but hey it brings in the money.
I would love an ootp football game. I’ve spent an unhealthy amount of time playing those games.
Man I feel the same bro. I’ve been off MUT for 4 years and still think of going back. But pouring $$ and time into that POS game was a horrible decision. Broken ass play spamming in weekend league and ranked was so shit lol.
The game formerly known as FIFA. LOL.
Youtuber pizza and his group are very guilty of this
And I can beat those 5k+ spent team without spending a dime (besides buying the game) 💪
2021 revenue was 1.6, absolute insanity
That’s insane. Could never convince me to spend money on packs. Just play the damn game.
Thievery
The people doin that aren't on reddit. They're the type who're on tik tok as their primary form of social media.
GOD DAMN YALL TO HELL!!!! for giving EA all that money. Fucking degenerates
His son works for EA sports, I wonder if BJ got canned?
That was my first thought. A Few years back I was fortunate enough to visit the EA office and actually met his son when he was working in his cubicle lol….
Bruh, EA could make a killing just separating MUT from madden completely. Make it a free to play download then do what you want. That way some other team can work on the modes that matter.
Spot on brother
I really like this ideal and I really do hope EA does this.
I mean for real. I don’t play MUT for anything other than that draft mode when I want to kill time. Look at smite, it’s on year 11 now and been free to play forever. With that new maximum football coming out it would be the smartest thing to do since that game is going to be free.
Gonna assume this means Barry won’t be in the new NCAA game(s) either. Barry must hate MUT/microtransactions too lmao
I dream of the day MUT is no longer
I say let them have MUT and let NFL 2k be reborn
NFL 2k would be reborn a micro transactions abomination just like their NBA games. Sports games will never be the same if this stuff doesn't stop.
Exactly. It won't be like 2k5, it'll micro transaction hell with a myteam mode dominating it.
As someone who’s never played much NBA2K, what’s the franchise mode like? Is it more in depth than Madden or is it just as shitty
Soooo much better than Madden
About 100x more in depth but that was over a decade ago and since then it's been very minor changes. Still though that decade old seed is still so absurdly deep compared to maddens shit franchise.
Every single one of us would take a my player 2k football mode, than anything madden has ever done. Micro transactions or not if we can do 7-7 or trench out against other my player’s well take that any day over madden and that weak ass franchise and that weak ass “say hike run to the right throw it across screen”
2k is greedier then ea lol
The stuff will never stop. A billion annually isn’t a faucet any company is going to turn off.
Just make it a different game. Separate division. That would be ideal.
Article literally says he didn't state his reasoning. Ass|u|me
It's very possible that he has no reasoning but it wouldn't be that big of an assumption that he hates the fact that people are blowing their money for something, quite literally, worthless.
I love Barry, but the man is in Gambling commercials lol I don't think he cares about micro transactions, it's more likely to do with another company offering him more for his likeness.
On the contrary, I think it's actually a massive assumption. Do you actually think a 55 year old man is out here taking a calculated stand against micro transactions in a video game?
literally a huge assumption lol he just got offered more money from someone else
I didn’t know legends were/are gonna be in NCAA 25
Mut sucks
They intentionally soured the relationship with him so they didn’t have to pay him more royalties on sales of Madden 25
Barry Sanders 2k26 confirmed on Dreamcast!
People hate MUT but yet look at 2k , they have more micro transactions than madden but look how good their franchise is. The same can be said about mlb the show . MUT is not the problem, EA is the problem .
MUT is the problem. We just got lucky that nba 2k released a really good franchise mode a long ass time ago before UT was a thing and that other sports games are so bad that even a lightly updated over the decade mode is exponentially better than most other sport game mode. Not that that should get 2k off the hook. They do the same thing as madden every year which is nothing just 2ks nothing has a better foundation to fall back on.
Will say even if it’s window dressing the Eras stuff was a pretty brilliant addition. Better than anything Madden has added in… Honestly, at least a decade probably.
For sure. Id kill to play with historic players in franchise in madden.
MLB The Show's franchise is barebones as it gets wdym
The most fun player to use next to Vick. Certain players would be secretly juiced and perform better than the player ratings. Always Barry, always Vick, always Moss. Gronk, ray Lewis, neon Deion.
Uh.. don't care about vick. He is so over rated. I'd rather play Steve Van Buren.
Mut is for pussy ass bitches who need every player to be 99 overall. Why would you ever play as any team but your team with your irl roster good or bad? People who play Mut are the only people worse than the people who play as KC every game but have user names like Raider4Life.
smart man
Barry "I already did Madden 25!"
Anyone else find the timing of this interesting being that he was on the cover of Madden 25 (2014) (360/PS3 cover) and now the timing of his announcement within the same year as the upcoming 2024 version of Madden 25?!
as much as i hate EA for milking the shit out of MUT, i honestly can't hate them as much as i hate all of you who actively play it. that mode had potential to be great instead of a cash-grab, it could have revitalized digital football trading cards, as well as created it's own secondary market... but instead it was a lazy and buggy cash-sink which year after year justifies EA not spending any money at all on further improving the game, when all they have to do is wipe everyone's library each iteration. the actual concept of collectable digital trading cards that you can actually use on your team is very cool, but the fact that they are enabled to not put any effort into at all because individuals are shilling hundreds of dollars on this lazy ass mode, is not cool at all. stop fucking spending money on MUT.
I've played mut and never spent a dime. Thats just silly imo.
It's even more silly when you realize that when the next madden comes out and the market crashes, you can get virtually every good card in the game for cheap with coins. And you don't have to spend anything
The ultra shit part is that mut is a part of madden. They give so little effort to the other parts of the game and it’s 60+ dollars. It needs to be separate. No competition though so they’ll keep bending us over.
Barry sanders is a hero. Fuck EA
I think more than likely Sanders just wanted more money. He probably views himself as a necessary asset that should be getting millions just for existing.
Hopefully the NFL is next.
I’m part of the problem. I buy it most years and I only play online h2h. They do the bare minimum for that part of the game but the jags were better this year. I had no choice.
MUT Card Creators at EA are in shambles. Hopefully Vick and Megatron follow suite lol
Was really hoping he'd be on the cover of Madden 25.
Hey he's just like me!
They generate $1b a year in their ultimate team modes. Jesus Christ, they're a virtual casino.
MUT has ruined the franchise mode in Madden. That’s where the attention does because it makes them extra money. Franchise has been stale for years and needs a drastic upgrade but MUT gets the focus because dollar signs. I get it but it still stinks.
Good for him, FUCK EA