E.A. Sports has become embroiled in controversy once again.

A Twitter thread has gone viral after popular Twitch Streamer and YouTuber ScudzTV revealed the challenge he faced in putting together his FIFA 21 Ultimate Team ‘dream team’.

Ultimate Team has been a huge success for the gaming giants. The online mode lets players sculpt their dream line-ups.

This can be done by earning coins to spend on randomised packs or individual players. More controversially, players can also cheat by buying these players using microtransactions; in other words, paying real money for virtual goods.

Microtransactions have been triggering gamers for years now, with most seeing it as a cynical ploy to squeeze the maximum revenue possible from loyal fans who already shell out huge sums for the game each year. ‘

Pay to win’ has been a phrase often thrown at E.A. Sports since they started these shenanigans.

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Last year, an advert that marketed the use of microtransactions in FIFA was pulled from the magazine of kids’ toy store Smyths'.

Spending real money on packs that give a random selection of players strays further into murky waters as it essentially amounts to gambling.

Bringing kids into the world of pseudo-gambling is highly ethically questionable.

Nonetheless, E.A. has been making a killing from this practice; and with the popularity of the FIFA series, and other games that have fallen foul of these tactics; they won’t cease microtransactions if they can help it.

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ScudzTV is the latest prominent gamer to shine a light on the morality of these practices at E.A. He showed just how long building a legendary team in Ultimate Team would be using the conventional method of earning coins in game to build his team.

According to our ScudzTV, a 'mere 100 million coins' were needed for him to build a team boasting 11 ‘Icon’ cards.

How many matches to earn this bounty? 66,666 matches, if you average 1,500 coins per match and get your weekly rewards.

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Even more shockingly, '22,000 hours of gameplay or 916 days of gameplay' would be required to get there, based on average match being around 20 minutes long.

ScudzTV’s struggles show the lengths to which E.A. goes to push players into participating in microtransactions.

Most fans just can’t put in as many hours playing FIFA, except perhaps those who do it professionally.

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Also, factor in E.A. bringing out a new iteration of the game each year, meaning the lifespan of the game is too short to make spending great lengths of time on making a team worthwhile.

This leaves fans with the inevitable choice of missing out on their dream team, or spending real money, and potentially a lot of it, on taking a shortcut to success.

He then further crunched the numbers on how much would need to be spent on trades and FIFA points in a separate tweet:

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"Assuming an average of 10,000 coins profit per trade I need to make a mere 10,000 trades," he tweeted.

"Assuming I trade 10k every 10 minutes, I will need to trade for 1,650 hours or 69 days of trading 24/7."

ScudzTV added in a separate tweet: "Assuming an average of 100,000 coins profit per 12k FIFA Points spend I need to purchase 1000x 12k FP.

"At a cost of £79.99 per 12k, I will need to spend a total of £79,990 on FIFA Points."

Hopefully one day the weight of angry FIFA fans will be enough to force E. A’s hands to chop the much-maligned practice