Football fans outraged over FIFA 23’s lack of full cross-play

Next version of hit football game still lacks long-awaited feature and gamers are mad.

FIFA 23, an upcoming football game from developer EA Sports, has announced several long-awaited features for fans of football. However, one aspect is not changing — the lack of cross-play functionality for one of the game’s most popular modes. This has sent the fanbase into an uproar, taking to social media to demand answers.

The FIFA series has several game modes for players to enjoy, such as one-on-one competitions, tournaments, and a mass-player mode called Pro Clubs, which requires 11 players on both teams. That last mode is pretty popular, with esports teams of 11 forming to compete for a variety of prizes worldwide.

The newest FIFA, which launches in late September, will come packed with cross-play features for most of the game modes — which means the ability to play FIFA with anyone on any console, regardless of whether your mates own an Xbox or PlayStation. However, Pro Clubs will be unable to enjoy cross-play, and there has been no statement as to why.

FIFA 23 promises plenty of improvements but still no full cross-play. Picture: EA Sports

With cross-play, the pool of players grows exponentially — and the Pro Clubs game mode would benefit immensely from a larger pool of players. This omission is striking enough to have community leaders demand answers. The VFL, a community dedicated to Pro Clubs competitions, penned an open letter to the developers asking why Pro Clubs got excluded.

In the letter, the VFL states: “I feel the time has come to be a leader in asking the very public & direct questions to EA Sports in regards to why yet again, for another year, our game mode that we love and play has been ignored.” Continuing, they claim that players “will begin to see the game mode collapse” if cross-play isn’t enabled.

In other sports games, such as NBA titles, the different game modes are typically combined to ease frustration and allow more people to play together, so the omission is quite odd. As noted by the letter itself, it is possible that the FIFA license is restricting these options for some reason — and as this is the last year of FIFA branding for the series, it is possible that future titles will fix the problem.

Original reporting by Push Square.

Written by Junior Miyai on behalf of GLHF.