The last of gaming's great historical partnerships (opens in new tab) has been released, and FIFA 23 has left a significant player base unplayable thanks to a glitch in EA's own anti-cheat software.

Some players have reported conflicts with other anti-cheat and DRM software on their PCs, and many others have expressed frustration through the game's current "mostly negative" Steam reviews; PC Gamer reviewers seem to have been affected as well (this FIFA 23 review will therefore be postponed until the author is able to play a bit).

"FIFA 23 is a simulator, not a sports game," Colonel Crumb wrote in his Steam review.

"A simulator for troubleshooting why the game won't start," Rmgerro grimly noted, "If you can't play the game, you can't cheat, so I guess the anti-seat works."

Developer and publisher EA issued a statement acknowledging the issue and promising a fix:

"We are aware of the issues some PC players are experiencing when launching FIFA 23. We are actively working on a fix. We understand the frustration of the PC community and apologize."

[10 [EA further mentions expanded cross-play support for FIFA 23: PC players can play with stadium owners as well as console owners (PS5 and Xbox S/X) (at least until January). The company also states that "many players who encountered errors were able to play after using one of our help solutions," although it seems fair to add that many players have found that help solutions do not really help. Nevertheless, here is EA's help page (opens in new tab).

"We are working to fix all issues as soon as possible," says the publisher. It's still far from the grand old send-off that fans have come to expect. In the video above, EA's FIFA CM Shelden Rogers largely repeats existing statements, but he says that one of the immediate improvements the development team is trying to implement is "updating error messages to make it easier for players to understand what the problem is and troubleshooting steps .

There is no ETA on a fix. In the meantime, for now, it's probably best to give this entry a bit of a hip shake. Anti-cheat measures are clearly necessary for a modern competitive experience, especially one on the scale of FIFA, but if they are stopping the game from working for most players, then they are clearly self-defeating. There are certainly a handful of players who will have access to this title regardless, but at least for now, FIFA 23 is far from a beautiful game.