In Canada Electronic Arts found itself at the center of a new particular case: a class action lawsuit brought against the American entertainment giant, with plaintiffs who accuse EA of profiting from an illegal gambling business by selling loot boxes for real money. EA is accused of secretly using its patented technology Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (DDA), designed to dynamically adjust the difficulty, in its series FIFA, Madden and NHL, with the aim of encouraging users to purchase Player Packs Ultimate Team to increase their chances of winning.
In a statement released on Thursday, the software house revealed that the same plaintiffs have now closed the case after showing them evidence that there was no use of DDA or scripting in the Ultimate Team modes: “This is the right result. Even though EA owns a patent for the DDA technology, that technology has never been in FIFA, Madden or NHL and never will be. We wouldn't use DDA technology to give players an advantage or disadvantage in online multiplayer modes in any of our games, and we absolutely don't have that in FIFA, Madden or NHL. "
The former head of Electronic Arts, Peter Moore, recently stated that FIFA Ultimate Team was "very far" from gambling. Taking as an example, in fact, the packs of FIFA 21 Ultimate Team, he stated that: "they are a bit like the collections of cards that you found in cigarette packs in the 20s and 30s or like the Lucky Bags of sweets in the UK. . With this kind of content you always get something, it's not that if you open a package then you discover that there is nothing inside ”. Moore, however, stressed that “this is my personal vision, I am outside the video game industry and I just think that there is really a lot of distance between gambling and mechanics such as loot boxes. I mean, the numbers speak for themselves, they are very successful, people buy them and they know they can get gold packs or less, it's not about gambling. "
