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Coronavirus: The impact on football mobile games

The 2019–20 Coronavirus pandemic has caused the most significant disruption to the worldwide football calendar since World War II. Across the world and to varying degrees, football leagues have been cancelled or postponed.

Almost all national football leagues have been postponed. All International Competitions including UEFA EURO, UEFA Champions, and the UEFA Europa League and the Copa America has been postponed. Its impact has fallen heavily on the popular mobile game. Namely FIFA Mobile and PES Mobile where the in-game events depend a lot on the onfield live games. Let’s take a look at how the global pandemic has affected our favorites football games.


FIFA Mobile

Like every other company, there has been a vivid impact on EA due to the COVID-19 situation. The developers continue to deliver in-game content by continuing to work from home as almost the EA offices are closed.

FIFA Mobile provides playable Live Events that correspond with the real-world leagues and tournaments as they progress through the season. The adjournment of football leagues has influenced some of these events, while other in-store could largely be affected.

Global Team of the Week (GTOTW)

Due to suspension of play around the world, it was impractical to bring out the weekly Team of the Week (TOTW) event cards based on weekly on-field performance. FIFA Mobile devs tackled this situation by temporarily replacing the TOTW with Global TOTW. It has a similar format to TOTW along with the use of tokens. Also, it picks players based on their past performances.

Player of the Month (POTM)

Every month, based on the previous month’s on-field performances, EA brings a new Player of the Month (POTM) card in FIFA Mobile. 

Was this the last POTM?

Even for this month, the POTM was released on it’s scheduled date based on the games that happened last month. With the sudden pause to worldwide football, it’s unclear whether there would be any more new POTM card next month. It is believed EA does have a plan in place to bring back POTM cards of earlier months. Similar to past seasons, enabling users cash in their POTM tokens.

Update: According to the announcement, made by EA on 7th April, the POTM returns for another month! Thus we will be seeing another POTM card selected by EA as their upcoming Player of the Month.

Previously Scheduled Events

UEFA officially postponed all of its club competitions indefinitely. Thus recurring in-game events like Champions League and Europa League events have been put on hold.

As posted by the game’s community manager on Reddit, the current circumstances have forced the team to shift their schedule. As nobody could have really planned for what has happened.

It is also being feared that the Team of the Season (TOTS) event might be adversely affected due to the ongoing pandemic. As all leagues are stalled and no football being played. It is to be seen how EA comes up with a plan of releasing the community favorite event.

TOTS could be affected due to the present situation

Upcoming events

In spite of working from home, the developers have always continued to surprise us. They have delivered some of the best content to keep the users busy in the current lockdown situation. New events like Bundesliga Rivals and Picnic Party have already been a hit. And a lot more is in store in the upcoming future.

After March, April is supposed to be a happening month as well.

Team of the Season So Far

EA didn’t disappoint us after all. They released Team of the Season So Far as an answer to the dilemma of TOTS. While both football and the world at large find themselves in unprecedented times, Team of the Season So Far is the chance to celebrate the best players in each league so far this season. The same special high-rated TOTS items players look forward to at this time each year, while we wait eagerly until football returns.


PES Mobile

Having no-different conditions to EA, Konami also had to shut down its offices. They declared work from home for its staff to counter the ongoing situation.

coronavirus on football mobile games
Notice as sent by Konami in-game

With the beautiful game being affected, PES Mobile falls under the list of games where current conditions affect in-game content. Almost all football leagues are suspended or nullified across the world. Though certain in-game events have been adversely affected due to it, the developers have already provided speedy counterparts.

eFootball Matchday

Matchday a new Online mode was introduced this year. It is one of the most successful events in-game by far. The players pit against each other representing their favorite clubs distilling the essence of football culture into a competitive format.

Due to ongoing pandemic the competitive eFootball.Pro featured matchdays 7-9, as well as knockout stages, are postponed until further notice. Konami although is organizing friendly eFootball matches between teams to keep the excitement alive and streaming them live on YouTube. Like previously you can also earn the free extra coins if you tune in through the stream link in-game.

After Konami’s latest maintenance on 16.04.2020, they have confirmed the postponement of the eFootball Season Program Matchdays. The final matchday to earn eFootball Seasons points was scheduled to take place on 17.04.2020, but due to the ongoing crisis, Konami has pushed this date to mid to late May.

Notice as of 16th April 2020

The deadline for registration in the program has been postponed too. This is great news for players who have still not registered in eFootball Season Program and also players who haven’t played any of the previous matchdays. They now have till the end of May to rack up the points to earn various rewards including 1500 my club coins. There is also bad news for players who were hoping to get those coins on 30.04.2020 as the 2nd reward distribution date for the season has also been postponed to May end. Konami has also declared that they will announce all the final dates in a future notice.

Player of the Week (POTW)

PES Mobile released a set of featured players based on their real-life on-field performances. The Player of The Week (POTW) pack was released after the regular maintenance on Thursday. But as the leagues all over the world have come to a stop, no POTW packs are being released now. It makes the thrill of pack opening in the game a lot less interesting.

However, Konami has tried to counter it with their Iconic Moments Series as part of their 25th Anniversary campaign. It gives users a chance to pack an Iconic Moment Legend who had been an outstanding performer for his club. But the pack odds are relatively low compared to the POTW pack.

Condition Ratings

Condition Rating is usually updated weekly (every Thursday). If the players had a good week in real life, they will witness a form upgrade via Condition Rating. The suspension of football leagues has impacted the condition rating of players. All the players (except Legends) ratings are set to C.

Previous Player Conditions as we knew are replaced

This is important because condition rating affects the gameplay of players in-game. So, no player will get an additional advantage or disadvantage of their condition in-game during this period.

Upcoming Events

With UEFA officially postponing the Champions League indefinitely, the European Stars POTW has been put on hold. Supposed to release on Thursdays, after the completion of each leg in the knockout stages, it has been stalled.

UEFA also announced that EURO 2020 being rescheduled to 2021 as a result of the current crisis. Konami had originally announced a new UEFA EURO 2020 Tournament Mode on March 12! It was scheduled to come out on April 30th as a free update, on all platforms. This means the players can experience the tournament on their devices for free, starting April 30th!

UEFA EURO 2020 dlc is postponed

After the announcement on 16th April, The DLC for UEFA EURO 2020 originally scheduled for April 30 release has been postponed until further notice. This is really bad news since everyone was excited for virtually taking part in the tournament matchdays with the officially licensed national teams.

On the other hand, PES also has the 25th Anniversary Campaign part 2 scheduled for this month. So we can expect some grand surprises soon.

UEFA Euro 2020

On May 18th, 2020 Konami came in with positive news for all the players as the Official UEFA Euro 2020 update was finally set to come live. As of the announcement made, the update will be released on 4th June 2020 featuring all the 55 national teams participating and 2 brand new stadiums. Also, Featured Players are set to resume on their original release days, starting from 18th May itself.


Hope you all are safe during this crisis period. Spend your quarantine days by playing FIFA Mobile and eFootball PES 2020. Stay home and stay safe!


What do you think about this situation for Football mobile games because of Coronavirus? Let us know in the comments below.

Hope you find this article useful. For more articles like this, make sure to follow Gamingonphone on Facebook and Twitter.

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george

Man this is awesome

john

thanks

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