Various FIFA 23 FUT Centurions player items, including Zlatan Ibrahimovic, appeared to get nerfed by EA Sports ahead of the TOTY promo release.
The FIFA 23 FUT Centurions promo featured the release of two promo squads, with Team 2 containing a special player item for players like Ibrahimovic, Mohamed Salah, Fred and others, whilst Team 1 featured the likes of Neymar Jnr, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Fred. The FUT Centurions event is set to end later tomorrow, with the highly anticipated TOTY promo (Team of the Year) set to launch on Friday, January 20 at 6pm GMT/ 1pm ET/ 10am PT, after the TOTY public vote closed on Tuesday.
UPDATED 14.38pm GMT, Wednesday, January 18: EA Sports responded to Mirror Gaming's request for comment, confirming that this issue has now been resolved, and that the impacted players have had their attributes switched back to the original/correct ones.
Ahead of the Ultimate TOTY squad being unveiled, various social media users reported that Ibrahimovic's FUT Centurions item, along with others, have been changed retrospectively, with some of the individual attributes being reduced. Twitter user @BeSoccerTeam was among the first to notice the changes, and they can be seen in the tweet below.
According to screenshots on social media, it appears that Ibrahimovic's FUT Centurions 90-rated player item has received the following individual attribute downgrades and upgrades, following an in-game update:
- Stamina – 85 to 61
- Jumping – 92 to 99
- Strength - 93 to 99
- Aggression – 88 to 99
- Balance – 82 to 58
- Agility – 85 to 76
- Reactions – 88 to 87
Although some of the attributes have been upgraded, the significant stamina, balance and agility downgrades will significantly impact the way that the item performs in game, much more than the other attributes.
Twitter user @DonkTrading has also tweeted that Ibrahimovic's FUT Centurions item has lost around 700,000 coins in value on the FUT 23 transfer market. Player item values fluctuate overnight, but typically not by that huge amount, suggesting that the nerf might have something to do with the drop in value.
The Swedish striker is not the only player to have received changes to their in-game stats by EA. Twitter user @gienixs found that nine other players from the Centurions Team 2 were impacted, though most of them have received minor changes to their stats. Here's a list of the 10 players who have been modified by EA:
- Zlatan Ibrahimovic (AC Milan)
- Marco Verratti (Paris Saint-Germain)
- Davide Calabria (AC Milan)
- Alexis Saelemaekers (AC Milan)
- Cristhian Stuani (Girona)
- Fred (Manchester United)
- Iago Aspas (Celta Vigo)
- Cesar Azpilicueta (Chelsea)
- Cristiano Biraghi (Fiorentina)
- Christian Gunter (Freiburg)
FIFA Ultimate Team players have long suspected that EA Sports nerf special player items a few weeks after they're released, including promo items, SBC players and objective reward players, so is this the evidence to prove this theory?
Firstly, the attributes that were given to the cards when they were first released could have been incorrect initially, and EA is simply updating them, or it could be a purely visual issue, with no impact on in-game performance. An example of this is when EA Sports updated the stats of some of the players in FUT Centurions Team 1, where face attributes were appearing lower than intended and the change had no impact on the player's in-game performance.
But, the issue here is that EA announced these changes to the public less than four hours after Team 1 was released on Friday, January 6, whilst the drastic updates to the likes of Ibrahimovic in Team 2 have been made five days after Team 2 was released, with no communication from EA Sports.
Either way, it looks pretty shady right now. There would be outrage within the FIFA community if it turns out that EA Sports actually did manually nerf these special player items, after scores of FUT players have spent time and – let's face it – money, to try and obtain these cards with the stats advertised, only for them to be made worse after the fact.
We'll be constantly updating this story with any further information that comes to light, including any response from EA Sports.
