by Game of Review Team · published 2026-10-04 · updated 2026-10-04
A strong launch, on paper
EA Sports FC 27 launched on September 24, 2026, and it did exactly what the biggest football license in gaming usually does: it went straight to the top of Steam's global top sellers chart, ahead of Counter-Strike 2 and Cyberpunk 2077. The standard edition runs $69.99, with a $99.99 Ultimate Edition for anyone who wants the early Ultimate Team pack, and it ships with the usual spread of modes: Ultimate Team, Career, Clubs, and a new one called The Grounds.
What's actually new this year
The Grounds is the headline addition - an open-world social hub where your created pro wanders around playing street-football minigames with friends, wired into Clubs mode so the same character can sign for a teammate's team. It's clearly borrowing the structure of the hub modes NBA 2K has run for years, and that comparison is exactly what's made some players nervous going in.
The microtransactions question
EA producer Karthik Venkateshan has said The Grounds is built around playing to progress rather than paying to progress, and that the mode's purchases are meant as catch-up options for returning players rather than pay-to-win shortcuts. Whether that holds up once people have spent a few more weeks in it is the thing worth watching.
Where the reviews landed
Here's the part that doesn't match the sales chart: Steam's user reviews for FC 27 currently sit at "Mixed," with roughly half of around 2,200 reviews coming back positive. That's a rough score for a $70 release, and it lands in the same window as EA College Football 27 getting review-bombed over its own single-player microtransactions - so FC 27 showed up to an audience already primed to be suspicious of anything that smells like monetization creeping into modes that used to be free of it.
Who it's for: Ultimate Team and Clubs regulars who buy the new one every year regardless of the headlines, and anyone curious about The Grounds should read the recent Steam reviews before buying, not just the store page.
Our take
The sales chart and the review chart telling completely different stories is the real story here - the license is strong enough that it doesn't matter how the last game landed, but that's exactly the kind of goodwill that erodes slowly and then all at once. Tying a new social hub to the same genre of monetization that just got EA College Football 27 review-bombed looks like bad timing at best. Worth watching whether EA walks back or tunes The Grounds' economy in the first patch cycle the way they've had to do with past FC launches.
