A campaign calling for EA Sports to fix Pro Clubs on FIFA 23 in ongoing on social media, with a recent update leaving the game mode largely unplayable for almost a month.
The Pro Clubs game mode has always been a favourite amongst the FIFA community, allowing players to control one virtual pro and play on the same team with up to 10 friends on the same team. Unlike any other mode in FIFA 23, up to 22 players can be playing at the same time in a game of Pro Clubs, which is by far the most sociable mode in FIFA.
Pro Clubs has maintained a very loyal fanbase in FIFA titles, though the last few releases have seen the game mode get left on the periphery by EA Sports in a few different ways. Whilst Ultimate Team seemingly gets new updates every week, Pro Clubs seems to be abandoned by EA towards the end of a FIFA cycle.
Granted the publisher's priorities are most likely focused on its brand-new game EA Sports FC, Pro Clubs has started to become unplayable, with hundreds taking to social media after struggling to even connect to a game of Pro Clubs for a month. EA has highlighted the issue on its EA tracker but offered no update in around three weeks, with Ultimate Team receiving plenty of updates in that time.
#SaveProClubs – why EA is coming under fire from the Pro Clubs community (again)
This isn't the first time that the hashtag #SaveProClubs has trended on Twitter, with the same hashtag doing the rounds in August last year when EA announced crossplay would be coming to all online game modes in FIFA 23, apart from Pro Clubs. The community was left angered at the decision, with Richard Walz, Game Design Director for Pro Clubs and VOLTA Football at EA Sports responding to the criticism and claiming they were working on bringing crossplay to Pro Clubs in FIFA 23 after launch.
Walz also stated, "We will provide an update regarding cross-play as soon as we can, we hear you". No update was ever provided.
Now, as we enter the final few months of the FIFA 23 cycle, the same hashtag is trending, with a strongly worded Tweet from @OfficialVPG calling out EA for their neglect towards Pro Clubs, amassing over one million views.
The tweet claimed that the Pro Clubs game mode has been 'broken' for over a month, and whilst players have reached out to EA for a resolution, the publisher has failed to fix the issues. The account also claimed that the issue was temporarily fixed before a new update made the issue even worse than before.
On June 7, 2023, EA added a card to the Investigating section of the EA Tracker labelled, '[Pro Clubs] A disconnect can occur when attempting to matchmake'. Since it was added, no update has been provided, and the problems still remain in-game.
There are big hopes for Pro Clubs in the upcoming EA Sports FC release, with many hoping for crossplay to finally be implemented, an addition that would see the popular game mode become even more attractive. But, with Pro Clubs not offering any sort of additional income for EA unlike Ultimate Team, it's not surprising that the current focus is predominantly on FUT.
We've reached out to EA for an update on the situation and will update this article once we receive a reply.
