FIFA 23 - Community claims FUT cards have built-in obsolescence

FIFA 23 Ultimate Team continues to roll out the regular content, with Team of the Year coming soon and set to bring us some of the most powerful cards in the title!

Throughout the months we've been able to unlock various different players to improve our squads and unearthed some absolute ballers along the way.

However, recently a conversation has spread across socials suggesting that there is a big drop-off in ability in cards after an initial honeymoon period at your club.

Read on to discover more...

Conspiracy Theory?

Jake_FutTrading raised debate when he put out the following Tweet:

Users flocked to the comments section to give their opinions, with many saying they believed this to be true!

However, there were varying thoughts on what may be happening, which were:

• While a player's SBC is live, that card performs better in-game
• When a player's SBC expires, that card performs worse in-game
• After a set amount of games, ANY player has a drop off in quality
• Once a promo is over, the players from it perform worse in-game

Of course, there were people who didn't believe this, but it was surprising to see how many did.

The conversation then locked on to one player in particular, with Donk suggesting the same card as Jake.

Angel Di Maria's World Cup Team of the Tournament SBC card was raved about when released and it is also the most popular FUT card of the season so far!

However, multiple people are now saying he isn't playing as well in-game for them, and the timing of that coincides with the expiry of the Squad Building Challenge.

Seeking the Truth

The theory (or multiple theories) that there is some sort of built-in obsolescence from EA may catch the imagination, but we don't think it is likely.

Instead, people probably fixate on their new cards more when they start using them and notice how good they are, then get used to their abilities and no longer view them as something special.

It could also be that the card just isn't keeping up with the increasing power curve of the Ultimate Team mode, even if it once did.

Obviously, we can see that card stats aren't being changed once SBCs expire or promos end, and you can check that in-game too, so if the theory were true, EA would have to be pretty sneaky!