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To say that the Pablo Torre Finds Out covers a broad range of sports topics is to understate things tremendously. From on-air sampling of professional athletes’ alcohol and cannabis products to breaking the lid off corruption allegations within the NFL Players Association and laying out the reality of trans athletes in high school sports, Torre and company have range.
They’ve even found time to win a Pulitzer Prize for their reporting on a fishy deal between Kawhi Leonard and a fraudulent tree-planting charity carried out over an ongoing series of podcasts. When Pablo gets his sights on a topic, it can mean a lot of headaches for the powerful people he’s turned his lens on, and that might be causing just a bit of consternation around the offices at EA Sports.
That’s because the latest topic to catch PTFO’s attention is the ongoing fallout of College Football 27’s addition of microtransactions within its single-player modes, Dynasty and Road to Glory. The move angered the community and led to pushback from many of the game’s most popular online influencers, prompting EA to eventually remove the microtransactions, but not fully restoring functionality from last year’s edition.
Torre had already looked into the story when it first broke, speaking with comedian and actor Dan Soder. The two discussed the changes and what they meant for gamers, as well as covered the story’s developments to that point.
PTFO wasn’t done yet, as the latest episode featured Bordeaux, the YouTuber who had been an EA Partner and who led the #CFBPlayDontPay movement. Bordeaux discussed the scandal in more depth, and even shared his thought process on going after EA over the change, citing the perceived betrayal of EA’s lack of communication on the issue:
They were a bit silent on it. Like they put out these deep dives that have everything new coming to the game, and there was not really a mention. They put out these deep dives where I would expect they say, “Yeah, we’re going to remove some of the sliders and features y’all have gotten accustomed to. Why not talk about it?” So, that was where it really hit home for me: it’s just there all of a sudden, and we have to either deal with this, and we have to understand this is just year one.
They’re going to continue to try and extract more and more money if no one says anything. And from that point, I just didn’t care. That’s not the future I want to see with these games.
While he acknowledged it could put his relationship with EA at risk, he felt it was worth it and trusted his audience to stick with him, even if the benefits of working with the gaming giant go away.
