Fifa TOTS pack giveaway hit by delays as huge numbers of people sign up to get free FUT players

Fifa's free giveaway to celebrate the eWorld Cup has been hit by so much interest that it has been delayed.

Players who signed up for the offer – which gave a Team of the Season pack for the Ultimate Team mode to anyone who watched the competitive tournament – report that the packs are yet to arrive and that they are concerned that they might not arrive at all.

It led to a flurry of complaints and videos of players frustrated that they had gone through the complicated process of signing up, and had received nothing.

The giveaway offered anyone who plays Fifa and watched the eWorld Cup competition over the weekend – and linked the two accounts used to do so – the free pack.

EA Sports had suggested in its initial tweets that the pack would arrive immediately after the stream had closed. But with many hours since the competition finished and MoAuba was declared winner, many people are still waiting on their packs.

But producers say the delays are simply the result of the vast interest in the giveaway. So many players signed up that the systems used to check they did everything right are taking too long to give away the free FUT players immediately.

Joel Doonan, a producer on EA's Fifa, has been tweeting to make clear that the delay is only temporary and that the free players should be arriving in accounts soon.

"The TOTS pack for watching the #FIFAeWorldCup​ stream is being worked on," he wrote in the first of his posts. "The team needs to identify the players that watched, which takes some time. Just chill for a bit."

A second tweet the morning after the event made clear that it progress was being made but that many players will still be without the pack.

"Early morning update, packs have rolled out to some players, still working through the last group, pulling account data on this many people is not a fast process, but it’s happening," he wrote.

Players had to go through a complicated process to sign up to the giveaway. It required them to link their EA and Twitch accounts, and then open up the stream to watch the semi-final and final when it took place.

But it appears that EA Sports also has to use a similarly complicated system to verify that people actually signed up through that process, and that is leading to the delays with the new packs.

The explanation appears not to have put an end to the frustration, however, with vast numbers of people replying to the tweets worrying that their packs would never arrive or questioning when the delay would be over.