Cole Palmer's Twitch Ban Over EA Sports FC 27 Stream
Cole Palmer thought he was just giving the people what they wanted. Instead, he walked straight into a showdown with the makers of the game he was trying to play.
On Tuesday afternoon, the 24-year-old Chelsea star casually fired up Twitch and went live with EA Sports FC 27, days before anyone was supposed to touch it. No sponsors. No slick promo. Just Palmer, thousands of viewers, and an embargo he chose to ignore.
For more than an hour he ripped open Ultimate Team packs, jumped into matches and treated the stream like any other. The problem? The global release isn’t until September 25, with early access only due to start on September 18. Palmer had skipped the queue – publicly, and spectacularly.
The developers noticed. Quickly.
The broadcast was suddenly cut off, and before long his Twitch channel had been scrubbed of all EA Sports FC 27 content after a copyright complaint. One minute he was chatting chemistry styles and card stats, the next he was gone.
Even that takedown had a comic twist. Mid-stream, the official EA Sports FC account dropped into the chat and delivered a playful but pointed reminder.
"Errr Cole, weren't we going to do this a bit later? We'll be live at 6pm UK!"
The warning didn’t save him. The stream vanished, and Palmer was effectively hit with a ban. He didn’t sulk. He went straight to Instagram.
"I was only giving the people what they wanted... unban me pls," he posted on his story, tagging both Twitch and EA. On another platform, reacting to a post about his suspension, he kept it short and defiant: "We back soon."
The chaos around the embargo wasn’t the only drama. During the ill-fated stream, Palmer stumbled across his new in-game rating – and he was not impressed.
His overall had dropped from 87 to 85.
"I need a word with EA. They took two ratings off me," he said. "I had one leg for ten months last season, what do you want me to do?"
He then clocked his pace stat and really started to bristle.
"76 pace? I don't know how he's got more pace than me but, EA sometimes, man, they're a bit crazy," he added, baffled that Chelsea team-mate Morgan Rogers had been given more speed.
The frustration taps into a difficult reality he’s only just escaped. Palmer’s jokes about "one leg" are rooted in a brutal spell last season, when a groin problem and a fractured toe wrecked his rhythm and kept him out for chunks of the campaign’s early months.
On Chelsea’s pre-season tour in Sydney, he admitted he pushed too hard to get back.
"The first few months, with me being injured, I just wanted to go out and play, which I probably shouldn't have done," he said. "Obviously, I couldn't play how I wanted to play. It was a bad season, personally, with injuries and stuff, but I feel good now. The seven weeks obviously helped. I'm ready to go again."
He didn’t just rely on the club’s treatment room, either.
"I went to Sweden or Denmark, one of those countries, to see a doctor," he revealed. "We did speak about (surgery), but I didn't end up getting it."
Those trips, the enforced rest, the patience he admits he lacked at first – all of it seems to be paying off now.
This season, Palmer has started like a player unshackled. Lining up alongside Rogers, he has already racked up four goal contributions in the Premier League, matching his team-mate as the pair drive Chelsea’s attack and set the tone at Stamford Bridge.
His form in the league and the Carabao Cup has been electric, the kind that makes a video game rating feel a little out of date the moment it’s published.
For now, Palmer has to wait to see whether Twitch will welcome him back and whether EA will decide to play along with his cheeky plea. The ban might sting, the numbers on his virtual card might annoy him, but the real contest lies elsewhere.
Chelsea’s schedule is stacking up. The games are coming, the expectations rising. If Palmer keeps playing like this, the next rating he changes won’t be on a screen – it’ll be how the rest of the league talks about him.
