UPDATE 29th June 2016: EA has said it's looking into the FIFA Ultimate Team chemistry glitch that hit the headlines this week.

Community manager Rob Hodson took to the FIFA forum to say EA was on the case. Here's the statement:

Thanks to the FUT community for raising awareness of a potential fitness and chemistry inconsistency in some FUT items. After hearing this, our teams were in over the weekend and continue to thoroughly investigate the information. We will keep you informed with updates from the investigation. Our commitment to a fun, fair and secure experience in FIFA is ongoing, and as a community your feedback helps us achieve that goal. A special thanks for your continuous efforts across all channels.

Wondering what all the fuss is about? The video below provides a useful summary.

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ORIGINAL STORY 27th June 2016: The FIFA community reckons it's exposed a "chemistry glitch" that proves a long-running theory about Ultimate Team handicapping.

One FIFA player believes he's proved the chem glitch through the use of a skill move.

Users on the FIFA subReddit have picked apart the way the football game works and believe they've proved a troubling glitch that might have been a part of the series for years.

A summary: users reckon they've proved FUT includes handicapping - that is, teams comprised of highly-rated players feel sluggish. They reckon FIFA has been buffing low rated teams and nerfing highly rated teams without telling players.

Now for the detail: this has to do with chemistry. In FUT, by playing cards in particular positions you can increase your chemistry stats. High chemistry can boost the stats of players. A low chemistry can nerf them. Chemistry is important for FUT because it can give you the edge in a match. Theoretically, anyway.

FUT players believe the most expensive cards in the game do not attribute this chemistry-related stat boost properly, and it's this glitch that makes the players feel sluggish in comparison to cheaper cards which do attribute the chemistry stat boost properly.

Right, now for the working out. FIFA players believe chemistry does in fact work for day one cards (normal versions of cards), but does not work properly for non-day one cards, even more expensive, better versions of the same day one cards. This is why the belief is that some expensive upgraded cards are actually worse.

The FUT community is in uproar over this because these expensive upgraded cards are rare, and so people have spent a lot of real world money trying to get them.

Reddit user RighteousOnix made a video, below, that reveals the glitch: he took a day one player whose dribbling stat was below 86 and was unable to perform the "no touch sprint step over" skill move, which requires 86 dribbling. That makes sense.

He increased the player's chemistry so the dribbling was above 86 and was able to perform the skill move. This works as expected.

However, when he took an upgraded version of the player (a non-day one card), who also had a dribbling stat below 86, and increased the chemistry, he could not perform the skill move. The increased chemistry had no effect.

There's a solid round-up of the situation over at r/games. As is pointed out, this stat issue is not made explicit to the player.

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EA has yet to address the situation (we've asked), and now the FIFA community has called for a boycott on the purchase of FIFA Points until the mega publisher clarifies what, exactly, is going on here. Here's a snippet from the FIFA subReddit:

It's a similar sentiment on EA Sports' FIFA forums, where some players have said they feel "cheated".

In the meantime, be warned: those expensive, upgraded versions of cards you wish you had may not be worth having at all.