EA has suspended the concession of discretionary content indefinitely amid the “EA Gate” scandal that rocked the FIFA series.
Earlier this week, Eurogamer reported how the FIFA community had dug up direct messages that appeared to show an EA employee selling coveted Ultimate Team cards for thousands of pounds on the black market.
These direct messages mentioned FUT Icon cards in packages priced from 750-1000 euros. In a WhatsApp message, three Prime Icon Moments cards were offered for 1700 euros.
So, we crush / exchange / open packages and we can’t touch these PIM players, but EA employees sell them to people secretly for 700?!?! Lol I respect the grind but my god … pic.twitter.com/CCnhjZbcgH
– User ?? (@ Nick28T) March 10, 2021
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Special thanks to @RiberaRibell for the photo, he did an amazing job ??
(continued in comments)#fut #fifa pic.twitter.com/bJIg2rpWtI– Arcade-Fut (@FutArcade) March 10, 2021
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– Arcade-Fut (@FutArcade) March 10, 2021
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Icon cards are among the most sought after in FIFA Ultimate Team. They include legendary players such as Brazilian Ronaldo, Pele, Ronaldinho, Zinedine Zidane and Ruud Gullit, and are almost impossible to obtain through the mode’s controversial loot boxes.
Even rarer are Prime Icon Moments – special versions of icon cards that mark a special game or tournament for players.
EA launched an investigation in response and, overnight, provided an update:
“Earlier this week, we were informed of suspicious activity related to highly rated content on FIFA Ultimate Team,” said EA.
“We learned that FUT items were awarded to individual accounts that did not earn them through the game – that is, opening a package, buying on the transfer market, completing a reward challenge (e.g., an SBC conclusion) or other commitment ( for example, watching a Twitch broadcast)
“It appears that one or more EA accounts, which were compromised or used inappropriately by someone at EA, gave items directly to those individual accounts.
“The alleged behavior is unacceptable and in no way do we tolerate the granting or purchase of items from players in exchange for money. This practice goes against the competitive integrity of the game, is a violation of the EA User Agreement and is not something we tolerate. not allowing the exchange or sale of items outside of our game for many reasons, including the fact that this would create an uneven playing field for our community. “
Of course, EA grants the purchase of items from the player in exchange for cash – through loot boxes.
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EA insisted that its initial investigation showed questionable activity involving “a very small number of accounts and items”, but nevertheless called the alleged activity “unacceptable”.
EA then promised to take action against any employee who was involved in this activity, to remove any items granted from the FUT ecosystem and permanently ban any player who is known to have purchased them.
EA then apologized to the FIFA community: “Regardless of these actions, we appreciate how worrying this is for all of our players and apologize for the impact of these undue concessions on the community.
“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. “
EA continues to discuss content leasing – something it rarely does. That’s when EA delivers Ultimate Team content to players’ accounts. EA said that unless these items are issued to replace the lost content, they are generally non-negotiable items, meaning that they have no in-game exchange value, cannot be sold on the transfer market and cannot be shared with other players. Examples include items used in testing and quality verification, and providing discretionary content to athletes, EA partners and employees.
From time to time, the community will discover the Ultimate Team of a famous soccer player because he faced them online, and you will sometimes see soccer players use a special version of 99 of themselves in the game. This is the concession of discretionary content to athletes.
“Items granted in a discretionary manner to these partners or employees are always non-negotiable and can only be used for the account to which they were originally granted,” insisted EA. “We don’t use this discretionary process to grant content to professional video game influencers.”
Of course, this content can be used in Ultimate Team’s competitive multiplayer, which pays to win, against other online players – a balancing issue that EA does not address in its statement.
EA said that the sum of the items awarded through these three scenarios (customer experience, tests and partners) combined is less than 0.0006 percent of the player’s total items in the FIFA 21 ecosystem. EA insisted that these concessions did not they have an impact on the chances of any player in the ecosystem to acquire these players, they have no influence on the overall volume of content available and all content granted cannot be traded without any associated currency value.
“Obviously, the actions alleged in this case are very much outside of these legitimate content granting scenarios,” said EA.
EA’s investigation is ongoing, but the company said it has restricted how it happened and identified the accounts that received the content. Meanwhile, EA has suspended all concession of discretionary content for an indefinite period.
“Once again, we greatly appreciate and appreciate the FIFA community’s commitment and support in helping to identify this issue and we will continue to provide updates as the investigation progresses to completion,” said EA.
One of the many problems with the Ultimate Team that the “EA Gate” scandal highlights is the artificial shortage of these highly coveted items. Some of the most powerful and most sought-after cards in the game – the Prime Icon Moments versions of Ronaldo, Pelé, Ronaldinho, Zinedine Zidane and Ruud Gullit, for example – have less than a one percent chance of falling out of a loot box. The exact probability of obtaining a package icon is unknown, because EA does not disclose chances of an exact percentage below one percent – a lack of transparency that has been criticized for some time.
EA is already facing two other lawsuits related to Ultimate Team, one in the United States alleging that the mode violates the state of California gambling laws, and one in Canada accusing EA of operating “an illegal and unlicensed gambling system. in your loot boxes “.
Loot boxes have come under increasing scrutiny by government officials in recent years as well, especially in relation to their impact on young people. In January 2019, EA stopped selling FIFA Points in Belgium after government pressure on cashiers. The Netherlands Gambling Authority has also declared cash withdrawals illegal because they are considered a game of chance and therefore violate the country’s Gambling Law. The Dutch authorities ended up imposing on EA a fine of up to € 10 million on FIFA loot boxes.
FIFA draft boxes are currently not considered a form of gambling in the UK, although the government is examining them closely in this context. In July, the House of Lords gambling committee urged the government to “act immediately” to regulate them. The Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport launched a consultation on cash drawers in September and a review of the Gambling Act 2005 in December last year. You should publish a white paper before the end of this year.
FIFA hit the headlines last weekend with a Sunday Times investigation entitled “FIFA’s ugly game attracts teenagers to play”.
EA called FIFA’s draft boxes “surprise mechanics” and, in a statement to the Sunday Times, compared them to Kinder eggs. A spokeswoman told the newspaper that “there was no advantage to buying Ultimate Team packages instead of winning them”, and that most player packages were awarded through in-game achievements. She said that users can track or limit their spending through FIFA Playtime, a new tool in the game, and said access to the online game could be restricted using parental controls on the consoles.