Electronic Arts (EA) is trying to restore its reputation after the scandals with loot boxes in FIFA Ultimate Team. She decided to introduce content preview packs into games on an ongoing basis — Preview Packs. This system has already appeared in FIFA, but temporarily.
Recall that Preview Packs work on the same principle as regular loot boxes, but with one important difference. These are still randomly generated sets of cards with football players that FIFA users can buy. However, in the case of Preview Packs, gamers may not rely on randomness, but once every 24 hours “look” inside the pack to evaluate the content and only then decide whether they should make a purchase or not.
For the first time, Preview Packs became available in FIFA 21 in June as part of the Festival of FUTball event. According to EA CEO Andrew Wilson, the experiment turned out to be so successful that it increased the sales of loot boxes.
As a result, the company decided to return the loot boxes with a preview to the new part of the series — FIFA 22 — and leave them there as a permanent option. In addition to Preview Packs, players will still be able to buy standard loot boxes.
The launch of FIFA 22 is scheduled for October 1 for PC, PS4 and PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X |S and Stadia.
EA has repeatedly got into scandals due to the monetization of its games. For example, in April, the media published an internal document of the company, which talked about ways to force gamers to buy more loot boxes. And in July, the network started talking about the fact that EA is going to embed video ads in games, but the company itself denied the information.