Electronic Arts admitted over the weekend that it was investigating a billion-dollar FIFA Ultimate Team franchise scandal, and that it may involve EA employees. “We are angry, too,” the company said, outlining how and why it rarely provided articles, promising harsh action against those who abused the process.
Immediately effective, EA’s FIFA developers “suspended all discretionary content granted indefinitely.” This follows unconfirmed reports on social media, which Eurogamer recorded last week, that an employee of the company FUT’s “Icon” and “Prime Icon Moments” – extremely rare, extremely valuable items in the game – for as much as $ 2500 sell.
“Our initial investigation shows questionable activities involving a very small number of bills and items,” reads a statement from Electronic Arts. “Once our investigation has been completed, we will take action against any employee who apparently participated in this activity. Any items permitted by this illegal activity will be removed from the FUT ecosystem, and EA will permanently ban any player known to have obtained content in this way. ”
Almost since its inception in 2009, FIFA Ultimate Team has had a black market for the sale and transfer of currencies in the game, although Electronic Arts expressly prohibits that activity under the terms of use of FUT. Eurogamer remarked last week that this is the first allegation regarding the sale of cards in the game, cash, a transaction for which someone apparently has to work on the inside, as FUT items usually change the players’ hands through the auction house. , where anyone can bid on all items there.
EA explained its “content allocation” process, whereby players are legally allocated FUT items in the game. The most common uses of this allocation process are as manufacturing products for technical problems in the game, or as users accidentally deleting the content. The company also uses the process in its test and quality verification, but it is normally on test servers that are not exposed to the public.
A third scenario, however, involves assigning content to ‘athletes, partners and employees’. “Often we want to acknowledge contributions made by certain provocateurs, well-known partners or even our own employees,” EA wrote. Items granted in this way, “however, are not always tradable and can only be used by the account to which they were originally assigned.”
“We do not use this discretionary process to provide content to professional video game influencers,” EA said. EA said that such discretionary articles’ less than 0.0006% of the total player items in FIFA 21 ecosystem ”and does not affect the chance that a player would normally find or obtain.
The program is still being postponed while the company investigates what exactly happened here, and how. “Regardless [of the investigation]”We appreciate how it relates to all our players and apologize for the impact of these improper grants in the community,” said EA. ‘We also appreciate how extremely annoying and frustrating it is that this practice may have come from EA. We are angry too. We know that the trust of our communities is hard to earn and is based on the principles of Fair Play. … It is also a violation of the principle, and we will not let it go. ‘
The net revenue of Electronic Arts’ FIFA Ultimate Team for the fiscal year ending in the spring of 2020 was $ 1.49 billion. As the COVID-19 pandemic conditions pushed most of the world inside and out in isolation, FIFA Ultimate Team’s revenue increased by 70% last year for the quarter from April to June 2020, in the same quarter in 2020. 2019.
The franchise’s money power created black markets and other illegal behavior, drawing criticism of EA’s business practices and threats of regulation by European and American lawmakers. In 2018, EA Sports began to reveal the chance what type of articles players can expect to find in the different types of virtual card packages of the game. Last year, FIFA developers introduced a tool called FIFA Playtime, which enabled players (or their parents) to monitor and control the amount of time and money they spend on the game.