FIFA’s Ultimate Team mode found itself at the center of another conspiracy scandal. A few days ago, EA announced the end of a lawsuit that claimed they were handling matches. Now, some believe that an employee may be selling rare and valuable football players for large sums of real money. EA says it is investigating the allegations and “will take quick action” if it uncovers irregularities.
FIFA Ultimate Team, as I have explained more times in recent months than in the rest of my life, is the way in which players build their own team from cards that represent football players. The rarest cards have better statistics and better performance in the game. A mode with many loot boxes is unreliable, and players are perpetually suspicious of EA.
On Tuesday, Italian FIFA player Matteo Ribera posted a video on YouTube showing screenshots of conversations with someone who claims to sell ultra-rare cards, depositing them directly into people’s accounts – including cards that the game generally doesn’t allow people to negotiate. Prices are high, with Ronaldo’s ’97 Prime Icon Moments version reportedly selling for $ 2500 (£ 1800). When asked if it was safe and where the cards came from, the person said: “It is not possible to say exactly how for security reasons.”
Other screens rotating show someone claiming to have “a friend who works at EA, and he can load any player into his account”. These prices mention € 1000 (£ 855) for two coveted cards. Several videos and the screens are supposed to show proof of previous successful transactions.
There is no proof that this ‘friend of a friend who works at EA’ really exists or exists. This could be a cover story for a failure, exploitation or hack – the finest veneer of legitimacy to divert attention and maintain a profitable illicit trade secret. Or a scam? I do not know. But it would not be the first time that someone would use internal access to their own advantage.
The MMO Eve Online spacecraft notably had a major scandal after players discovered that one of the developers set a lottery for members of their own alliance to win valuable items and suffer little consequence. And just a few months ago, a Dota 2 developer had to apologize after using Valve’s tools to punish a player he fought over tactics in a match.
“A full investigation is underway and, if we identify misconduct, we will take quick action,” EA said in a statement yesterday. “We want to be clear – this type of behavior is unacceptable and in no way do we tolerate what is claimed to have happened here. We understand how it creates a concern about the unfair balance in the game and the competition. We will update the community as we get more clarity about the situation. “
FUT has long had a black FIFA currency market, a currency that is earned by playing and can be used to buy players and items in the game’s transfer market. Vendors deliver them through sneaky methods, such as arranging to buy players for much more than they are worth. EA does not allow this, but well.
The other recent FUT scandal was over the long-standing (but unproven) belief that the game used a technology called ‘Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment’ to make good football players and teams play worse, which encouraged people to buy more boxes to improve your team. EA denied this for years, but evidently did not believe it enough for several players to take them to court because of it. Last week, EA announced that the lawsuit was dropped after they let the plaintiffs speak to their engineers.
Part of me still finds it a little funny that Ultimate Team players are concerned with being cheated in a way that openly expels people with pay-to-win loot boxes. But you know, they know and accept it as part of the game. An EA employee earning money by secretly stacking teams of wealthy players, if that is what is really happening, it would be just a touch beyond the acceptable.
Disclosure: A long time ago, I used to play Dota 2 with that Valve employee. Wakka wakka.