EA Sports announced Friday that its college football video game, CFB 27, will no longer include microtransactions in single-player modes
The pivot comes after widespread fan backlash and campaigns to boycott the game, largely driven by popular online personalities whose content serves as a crucial promotional vehicle for modern games
Microtransactions, which require players to pay for access to certain in-game features, are commonplace in many games that feature online multiplayer modes. They often involve character skins or power-ups that give paying players exclusive content. Those transactions, however, are typically limited to online play, whereas most single-player games allow players to access their core content once they purchase the game
In the case of CFB 27, released on July 2 for deluxe-version buyers and on Thursday for the general public, EA required players to pay for XP slider progression within the game’s Dynasty and Road To Glory Modes. The modes are two of the franchise’s most popular and are both single-player. The game’s base price of $69.99 made the inclusion of microtransactions a point of further criticism
Sneaking micro transactions into single player modes lets me know everything i need to about where EA wants to take both football titles in the future
That’s why it’s now or never to make a change. Taking the game in that direction is going to ruin all of the support and love…
— Bordeaux (@bordeauxyoutube) July 7, 2026
In response, EA has decided to eliminate the paid progression systems at the center of the controversy. It said the changes will take effect Saturday morning
“In College Football 27, we aspired to deliver the deepest experience to date with all-new Dynasty Blueprint, new positions in Road to Glory, and the best College Football gameplay yet,” the game publisher said in a statement on X
“However, your feedback on Road To Glory and Dynasty is that we’ve missed the mark with the introduction of paid progression options. This was added independent of deeper mode progression with the aim to give players more choice, but what you’ve said is that they’re not adding the value we intended.”
An update from the College Football 27 Team. #CFBGoPlaypic.twitter.com/00b4TZrlPR
— College Football 27 (@EASPORTSCollege) July 11, 2026
Prominent figures such as sports gamer Bordeaux, who stood at the center of the online outcry, celebrated EA’s concession as a victory Friday night. Bordeaux’s initial YouTube video criticizing the new microtransactions garnered more than 530,000 views over three days. Shortly after EA’s announcement, the streamer posted a new video titled “We Won” on YouTube and pulled in 69,000 views in less than three hours. His X post thanking the company for “listening to the community” accumulated 286,000 views and 26,000 likes in three hours.
CFB 27 is the third game in EA’s revival of its college football series, which was released annually starting in 1993 but went dormant after the 2014 installment
The 2024 return with CFB 25 became the all-time best-selling American sports game in U.S. dollar sales, according to retail analysis firm Circana. While EA Sports does not make its full sales numbers public, senior vice president Daryl Holt told The Athletic last year that the game “outperformed all our expectations.”
Now, EA’s reversal of the microtransaction system is among the biggest fan-driven video game reworks in the industry’s history by one of its largest corporations
