Since launch FIFA 13 has started creaking. FUT has suffered pretty badly with trade issues, I’ve currently got a trade pile of 40 players that have been “completing” for well over an hour despite refreshing frequently and have been unable to use the companion app all day. I could use it yesterday after the fixes were applied, but not the day before that. It’s up and down like a yoyo, or something more hilarious like a sluts undergarments. Even after the fix was applied for people who had been experiencing locked accounts, those users were reporting that nothing had changed.

If you load up FIFA 13 tonight you’ll find that EASFC is disabled. In addition to the Career Mode crashes across all platforms, there are too many online issues being reported to count and most dramatically, if you’re playing on PC there’s a chance you won’t even be able to get the game to launch past the loading screen.

Then there’s complaints of people purchasing FIFA points but never receiving them, not receiving funds from FUT trades, purchasing players in FUT but not being able to assign them and not receiving XP after matches.

It’s not often you’ll find us linking to the Daily Mail, but it’s the highest profile “news outlet” to cover FIFA 13′s issues that isn’t completely centered around gaming. They also claim to have spoken directly to EA about the problems people have been having since launch:

“We’re very pleased with the incredible enthusiasm players have shown for FIFA 13 in its first days of availability,’ it told MailOnline.

‘We’re constantly listening to our fans and taking their valuable feedback on the game.

‘We continue to improve the game and address issues so all players have a good experience with FIFA 13.’

The latest comment from EA through official channels comes in the form of two tweets earlier today:

During the first few wks after launch, FIFA 13 sees an extremely high no. of users. To ensure the best possible gameplay for all users (c)

…we may perform brief periods of maintenance where you may experience connectivity lags or have challenges logging into apps and modes.

Nowgamer have also put together a timeline of events starting from the demo that’s an interesting read, but no more interesting than the FIFA 13 page on EA answer HQ and for the second year in a row FIFA issues make national TV in the UK, with FIFA 13 appearing on consumer protection program Watchdog. You can watch it here, the FIFA 13 bit starts at 48:00. They don’t really say much, but there’s been enough noise for them to warrant talking about it.

Are the issues accentuated by the success of the game? Probably. Should EA have expected this demand based on the growth FIFA has enjoyed year on year? Definitely. For the minute, lots of things are broken and EA aren’t being specific in regards to fixes.

Whilst this is a way of making light of what is still an issue with the game, fair play to the NHL team for putting this video out. I wonder if we’ll get something similar from the FIFA team…