These items, which must be won through game play or other involvement (i.e., a Twitch broadcast), have been granted to other accounts by one or more EA accounts, which have been “compromised or used inappropriately by someone from EA”.
The granting or purchase of items from players in exchange for money is in no way tolerated by EA, as “it goes against the competitive integrity of the game, is a violation of the EA User Agreement and is not something we tolerate”.
Although EA’s initial investigation found that this questionable activity involved only a small number of accounts and items, it is still unacceptable for the team.
After the investigation, EA will take action against any employee found guilty and any items that have been awarded in this way will be removed from the FUT ecosystem and the accounts that held those items will be permanently banned.
“Regardless of these actions, we appreciate how worrying this is for all of our players and apologize for the impact of these undue concessions within the community,” wrote EA. “We also recognize how extremely irritating and frustrating it is that this practice may have come from within EA. We are also angry. We know that the trust of our communities is earned with a lot of effort and is based on the principles of Fair Play. That Illicit activities undermine We have also made it clear, since the creation of the Ultimate Team, that items cannot be exchanged outside of our game, and this is critical to keeping our game safe from manipulation and malicious actors. , too – and we won’t leave it at that. “
For those who are not familiar with the granting of content, it is a process in which certain items of the game are distributed directly to a specific account. In FIFA, these items can be a player, a kit or a consumable.
The three most common forms of content award are through Customer Experience Worldwide, Test and QOL and Discretionary Content Grant (athletes, partners and employees).A worldwide customer experience concession is for when a player accidentally deletes content, the content disappears due to a technical failure or an error was made by EA and a player is given them as compensation.
Testing and QOL are for when content is granted for testing and quality verification. This usually occurs on dedicated test servers and is not seen by the global player base, but these tests must sometimes take place in the live environment to ensure that everything is working as it should.
Discretionary content granting is for when EA wants to “recognize the contributions made by certain professional football players, partner celebrities or even our own [EA’s] own employees. “These items are always non-negotiable and can only be used by the account to which they were assigned.These items represent only 0.0006% of the total items of players in the FIFA 21 ecosystem and have no impact on the chances of any account receiving a specific player or item by normal means.
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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.