When will we learn? College Football 27’s single-player micro transactions is an egregious middle finger to us all, and it’s just the start

People ask me why I like my retro games and my retro machines. Why I would rather play on them than boot up the latest and greatest for companies like Sony, Microsoft or Electronic Arts. In truth, there’s no one answer, but, more and more I am coming to the conclusion that a large part of it is that I am just getting sick to the back teeth of modern gaming and its snide, money-grabbing corporation-led bullshit.

It’s not even tricky to pick an example, but today readers, we are going for Electronic Arts and the frankly ridiculous nonsense it has pulled with the release of College Football 27. Ooh, it’s out on PC. It’s the best College Football ever. Firstly, it doesn’t even have the main coaches in there, as seemingly they weren’t offered enough money for their likeness. Okay, so that’s irritating. Secondly the athletes, you know the reason the game exists, get paid a paltry $1,500 and, wait for it, a copy of the game – ooh cheers, to sign away their rights. That differs if you are a mega star, but for the majority, that’s the deal.

But this. This thing with the single-player micro transactions that has clearly been born around a boardroom table by execs who only care about the P&L spreadsheet. Who am I kidding, there is no L. It’s the P spreadsheet and it’s time we all, collectively said enough is enough.

So what’s the deal here? Why are College Football 27 buyers so angry? It all comes down to how to upgrade your players and your coach in the 27 iteration of the Dynasty and Road to Glory single-player modes. Last year there was the option to increase the XP you gained during playing with a slider. This meant, if you didn’t have the time to play constantly in single-player you could still see improvements and feel as though you were getting somewhere. It’s not a cheat, but it was a Quality of Life addition and it didn’t affect any kind of multi-player gaming.

Now, what would you think, if you were sat around a boardroom table in a monetization meeting and somebody suggested that in the single player mode, the only way to the only way to accelerate progression of your coach and players was to pay money to Electronic Arts in the form of a micro transaction? That the option to level up quicker in any other way would be removed and directly linked to your bank account. How about that it would cost a further $100 to max out your coach IN A SINGLE PLAYER GAME? You see I’d call the execs who suggested it, exactly what they are. And we all know I can’t write that down here.

Not the others around that table though, they clapped and back-slapped because that’s what shipped with the release version of the game? Still think I am behaving like an angry old man? How about if you throw in that nobody knew this was a thing? It was never mentioned beforehand and apparently wasn’t present in the versions the media got to see? Nice move. Oh, and what if you slapped a 30-year limit on Dynasty mode so that when you reach that you have to start all over again, paying to upgrade a new coach? Has anybody watched Mythic Quest? Brad? He works for EA now.

Insider Gaming is reporting that the core team who worked on the project are “livid”, but it’s difficult to speak out when the axe hangs over everybody who works for these companies in the games industry. And make no mistake this is coming for every annual EA game that already makes them billions. Wait for what slides into EA FC 27, UFC, Madden and anything else. Because, the money made from Ultimate Team is not enough for these people. You can never have enough money.

Electronic Arts and their deal with the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund (PIF), Affinity Partners, and Silver Lake has found itself saddled with a $20 billion debt as part of that deal. And that debt needs paying off. By you and me it seems. In small micro-transaction-sized chunks, paying to make the game more enjoyable, more manageable. Remember that old mobile gaming trick of making XP so hard to come by you had to cough up cash? Companies have been commoditizing your enjoyment for years and now it is arriving in AAA.

You see, the argument for the defence will be, “you don’t have to pay to speed up your progression”, which is, of course true, but influencers and reviewers seemingly noticed that XP progression seemed slower than last year, and when raised the question, did not receive a response. Clever, clever.

So while we play their over-priced games on the over-priced consoles that the prices are ratcheted up on due to “global conditions” while they continue to keep bashing away to crush out every last cent from us in every way imaginable, we need to change. We need to stop pre-ordering this stuff. Heck, we even need to stop buying it.

It’s not our fault Electronic Arts has taken on that debt. Is it our fault Sony are paying more for components and absolutely does not want its profit margin to drop? Is it our fault Microsoft bought Blizzard, and King, and Mojang for billions?

From Sony’s stunt with making games digital only, to DRM that makes the games run worse for people who buy them, when is enough enough? I can’t even remember what game it was I see so much of this nonsense, but it is only a few weeks since it was revealed that a game manual was actually only included in the Premium version, not the standard. These are unique times indeed.

It feels like we are charging towards an inflection point. These companies versus us. We can sit still and let them literally do what they want and take our love for video gaming and weaponize it against us, or we can just stop being taken along for the ride with these shenanigans.

We just want to play games without feeling ripped off, but now we are feeling ripped off, we do have a pair of middle fingers of our own, and I whole-heartedly suggest we start using them.

Authored by Paul McNally

Paul McNally has been around consoles and computers since his parents bought him a Mattel Intellivision in 1980. He has been a prominent games journalist since the 1990s, spending over a decade as editor of popular print-based video games and computer magazines, including a market-leading PlayStation title. Paul has written high-end gaming content for GamePro, Official Australian PlayStation Magazine, PlayStation Pro, Amiga Action, Mega Action, ST Action, GQ, Loaded, and the The Mirror. He has also hosted panels at retro-gaming conventions and can regularly be found guesting on gaming podcasts and Twitch shows. Believing that the reader deserves actually to enjoy what they are reading is a big part of Paul’s ethos when it comes to gaming journalism, elevating the sites he works on above the norm.

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