FIFA Ultimate Team benches Russian players and clubs

polygon.com:

Players on Russian soccer clubs, their kits, those teams’ managers, and other Russian items are no longer available in FIFA Ultimate Team’s card packs, EA Sports told players this week.

In an announcement greeting players at login, players are told that a variety of Russian players and branded items are no longer available “in line with real world actions taken by our partners at FIFA and UEFA.” Last week, EA Sports’ FIFA 22 and NHL 22also removed Russian national teams from their lineups, corresponding to world sports bodies’ expulsion of Russian teams and competitors from several events at the end of February. The bans were implemented as a response to Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.

“EA Sports stands in solidarity with the Ukrainian People and like so many voices across the world of football, calls for peace and an end to the invasion of Ukraine,” the statement said.

In FIFA Ultimate Team, an enormous moneymaker for Electronic Arts, players assemble all-star teams comprising players from different nations and clubs, outfit them in different uniforms, and decorate their stadiums with tifos, banners, and other designs specific to other clubs or nations. These items are acquired by random draw in card packs. Players who have acquired them can also auction them off, for in-game currency, in FUT’s Transfer Market.

Players who have already acquired the Russian items in question can still keep them, EA Sports said. But their exchange prices on the Transfer Market will be fixed, to prevent any profiteering off their newfound scarcity.

The items in question are, according to Tuesday’s message:

EA Sports said last week it would remove the Russian and Belarusian national clubs from FIFA 22 (as well as NHL22). But Russians