EA disables granting of discretionary FIFA content indefinitely amid ‘EA Gate’ scandal

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EA has suspended the granting of all discretionary FIFA content for an indefinite period as it investigates allegations that an employee, or at least one person involved in EA FIFA, has sold rare FIFA 21 Ultimate Team items on an improvised black market for real money. gave an update on this scandal, which the community has dubbed “EA Gate”, and explained how it launched a “rigorous investigation” into how this could have happened and how it is reducing the accounts that received of the content via this “illegal method”. “The company has also made it clear that all accounts that have received items that have been “maliciously transferred” will be permanently banned.

These items, which are believed to be earned through in-game or other engagement (i.e. Twitch streaming), have been granted to other accounts by one or more EA Accounts, which have been ‘compromised or used inappropriately by someone within EA ”.

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Content granting or purchasing Player Items in exchange for cash is not condoned by EA in any way, as it “violates the competitive integrity of the game, violates the User Agreement of EA and is not something we condone ”.

While EA’s initial investigation found that this questionable activity involved only a small number of accounts and items, it is still unacceptable to the team.

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As a result of the investigation, EA will take action against any employee found guilty and any items that have been granted in this manner will be removed from the FUT ecosystem and accounts that had those items will be permanently banned.

“Regardless of these actions, we appreciate how worrying this is for all of our players, and we apologize for the impact of these inappropriate grants on the community,” EA wrote. “We also appreciate how extremely annoying and frustrating it is that this practice can come from EA. We are also angry. We know that the trust of our communities is hard earned and is based on the principles of fair play. illicit activities undermine that trust. Since the inception of Ultimate Team, we have also made it clear that items cannot be traded outside of our game, and this is essential to protect our game from manipulation and bad actors. This is a violation of that principle., As well – and we will not let it stand. “

For those unfamiliar with content attribution, this is a process in which certain elements 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 modes of granting content are through global customer experience, testing and quality of life, and discretionary content granting (athletes, partners and employees).A Global Customer Experience Grant is awarded when a player accidentally deletes content, content goes missing due to a technical issue, or an error has been made by EA and a player is returned to them as a result. of repair.

Quality testing and quality is used when content is tuned for testing and quality checking. This usually happens on dedicated test servers and is not seen by the global player base, but sometimes these tests have to take place in the real environment to make sure everything is working as it should.

The granting of discretionary content is reserved when EA wishes to “recognize the contributions made by certain professional footballers, famous partners or even our [EA’s] own employees. “These items are still non-exchangeable and can only be used by the account to which they were donated.These items represent only 0.0006% of the total player items in the FIFA 21 ecosystem and have no impact on the chances of an account receiving a specific player or item through normal means.

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Adam Bankhurst is a news editor for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

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