Man, let me tell you, sometimes you just get this weird itch. It happened to me a few weeks ago. I was sitting here, cleaning out some old boxes during a rainy weekend—you know, the kind of boring chore you put off forever—and I found my old PS3 controller. That thing immediately made me think about the vibe of 2010. The noise, the vuvuzelas, the damn shakira song that wouldn’t get out of your head. It hit me like a ton of bricks: I needed to play FIFA 2010 World Cup again.
I distinctly remembered lending my original disc to a buddy ages ago, maybe back in 2014 or something. Who knows where that thing ended up. So, the hunt officially started. A simple problem, right? Just buy a copy. Wrong. It turned into a full-on, week-long practice in online archaeology and dealing with ridiculous price gougers. I’m gonna walk you through exactly where I looked and the trash I had to sift through to finally score a decent copy.
The Initial, Naive Checks (Digital Black Hole)
My first move? The dumbest one. I fired up the PS Store on my old PS3, then on the PC, just in case. What a joke. That game is long gone. Digital storefronts are brutal, man. Once the licensing expires—and believe me, the FIFA and music licenses expire faster than milk—they just yank the whole thing. You can’t buy it, you can’t download it. It’s a complete digital black hole. So, ditch the modern way. This practice was going physical, old school.
My next thought was Steam or Xbox Live Marketplace—same story, different color. Delisted. Gone. No option for a cheap digital key floating around either, unless you want to risk some sketchy gray market site, and I wasn’t about to get my card hacked over a game from 2010.
Hitting the Pavement (Wasted Gas)
Okay, physical hunt it is. I pulled up a map and plotted a route. I hit three local video game trade shops, the kind that smell like dust and disappointment. What did I find?
- The first shop had a beat-up copy for the Xbox 360, disc covered in scratches, no manual, and they wanted sixty bucks for it. Sixty! Get outta here.
- The second place? They laughed. Said they hadn’t seen a copy of that specific World Cup one in years; people only ever trade in the annual FIFA titles.
- The third place had a copy, behind the glass case, marked $75. I asked why it was so high. The guy just shrugged and said, “It’s a collector’s item now.” Mate, it’s a mass-produced plastic disc, not a gold bar. Hard pass.
I realized that hunting locally was a complete time sink. I drove maybe 50 miles total, spent gas money, and all I got was dust on my shoes and bad smells in my car. The only way to win this was to take the search online and get systematic.
The Deep Dive (Dealing with Scammers and Dreamers)
This is where the real work started. When you search for old games, you’re not just searching for sellers; you’re searching for people who don’t know the difference between a decent price and a scam price. I focused my practice on two main things: finding the cheapest possible version on the least popular console, and filtering out everything that wasn’t “Complete In Box” (CIB).
I set up saved searches with alerts. I did not just search “FIFA 2010 World Cup PS3.” That brings up the $75 collector types. I tried variations. I searched for the lesser-known versions first, like the PSP or Wii version, just to see what the market was doing. Prices for those were laughably high too, maybe because there are fewer of them floating around.
My core strategy ended up being this:
- I focused on PS3. Why? Because more people had an Xbox 360 in my area, so fewer cheap copies were usually available for it locally. I figured more old PS3 stock would be floating around from people who upgraded to PS4.
- I filtered by “Manual Included.” This is the key. Sellers who include the manual usually care a little bit more about the product. It’s an easy way to filter out the lazy sellers with scratched discs.
- I sorted by “Newest Listed.” I was looking for the mistake. The person who just found a stack of old games in their attic and threw it up for a fast price without checking the “collector value.”
I saw listings at $100. I saw listings at $15 with discs that looked like they were dragged behind a bicycle. It was exhausting. I refused to click the “Buy Now” button on anything over $25. That was my self-imposed limit for a used sports game from 2010. This practice was about persistence, not panic-buying.
The Score and Why I Went So Hard
After four days of checking alerts every couple of hours—seriously, this was pathetic dedication—I finally bagged the copy. It wasn’t on the main sites, either. It was on a smaller, regional listing board I barely ever check, posted by a college student cleaning out his apartment for the summer. PS3 version. Disk looked clean in the photo. Manual clearly there. He just wanted $18, plus a few bucks for shipping. I hit the button and paid immediately. Didn’t even try to haggle. Total success.
Now, you’re probably asking yourself, why go through all that trouble for a random soccer game? Why all this dedication? Why not just play the new FIFA? Well, let me tell you.
The whole reason I needed that specific game goes back to that 2010 tournament itself. I was deployed overseas at the time. I was betting with a guy on my team, let’s call him Miller. Miller was a trash talker. For every major match, we’d bet. I kept losing because I was backing the wrong teams, and my debt to him was getting pretty ridiculous. We made one final, huge bet on the championship game that basically wiped out my entire debt, plus I got two weeks of his guard duty. But when we got back home, he swore I cheated somehow, that I had some secret tactic, and he never let it go. Before he moved away, he tossed down the game disc and said, “If you ever find that game and you can beat me fairly, I’ll admit you’re the better player.” I laughed it off then.
Well, turns out Miller is moving back to the area next month. I saw the announcement on social media. And you bet your ass I’m going to have this game, totally legit, waiting for him. I had to secure the practice platform for the final, decade-old showdown. This wasn’t just a game purchase; it was a necessary piece of a 15-year old rivalry I refuse to lose.
So, the takeaway? Don’t pay the insane prices. Be patient, check the manual status, and search the obscure corners of the internet. The good deals are out there, usually posted by people who just need fast cash and aren’t trying to feed their kid with “collectible video game profits.” Good luck with your own hunting practices, folks.