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Over the weekend, Electronic Arts admitted it was investigating a scandal in its billion-dollar FIFA Ultimate Team franchise that could involve EA employees. “We are also angry,” the company said, explaining how and why it is granting rare items, and promising tough action against those who have abused this process.
With immediate effect, EA’s FIFA developers “have suspended all discretionary content grants indefinitely.” This follows unconfirmed reports on social media, picked up by Eurogamer last week, that a company employee was selling FUT’s “Moments Icon” and “Prime Icon Moments” – extremely rare and rare in-game items. extremely valuable – for up to $ 2,500.
“Our initial investigation shows questionable activity involving a very small number of accounts and articles,” said a statement from Electronic Arts. “When our investigation is complete, we will take action against any employee who has engaged in this activity. All items granted through this illicit activity will be removed from the FUT ecosystem, and EA will permanently ban any player known to have acquired content through these means. “
Almost since its inception in 2009, FIFA Ultimate Team has had a black market for the sale and transfer of in-game currency, although Electronic Arts expressly prohibits this activity under the FUT Terms of Service. Eurogamer noted last week that this was the first allegation of in-game cards being sold, for cash, a transaction that would appear to require someone working inside as FUT items typically change hands. through the in-game auction house, where anyone can bid on any items there.
EA explained its ‘content allocation’ process, whereby players are legitimately awarded in-game FUT items. The most common uses of this allocation process are to manufacture products for in-game technical issues or accidental deletion of content by users. The company also uses the process in its testing and quality verification operations, but this is normally done on test servers that are not exposed to the public.
A third scenario, however, is to assign content to “athletes, partners and employees”. “Often times we want to recognize the contributions that have been made by certain professional footballers, famous partners or even our own employees,” EA wrote. However, items granted in this manner “are always non-negotiable and can only be used by the account to which they were originally granted.”
“We don’t use this discretionary process to award content to professional video game influencers,” EA said. EA said the discretionary item grant represented “less than 0.0006% of the total player items in the FIFA 21 ecosystem ”and do not affect the chances that another player will find or acquire them normally.
Yet that program is on hold as the company examines what exactly happened here and how. “Independently [of the investigation], we appreciate how much of a concern this is for all of our players, and we apologize for the impact of these inappropriate grants on the community, ”said EA. “We also appreciate how extremely annoying and frustrating it is that this practice can come from EA. We are angry too. We know that the trust of our communities is hard earned and is based on the principles of fair play. … It is also a violation of this principle, and we will not let it stand.
FIFA Ultimate Team’s Electronic Arts net revenue for the fiscal year ending spring 2020 was $ 1.49 billion. Last year, as conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic pushed most of the world in and into isolation, FIFA Ultimate Team revenue went ‘off the charts’ – up 70% for the quarter from April to June 2020, during the same quarter 2019.
The money-making power of the franchise has spawned black markets and other illicit behavior, sparked criticism of EA’s business practices, and regulatory threats from EU and US lawmakers. In 2018, EA Sports began revealing the odds of what kind of items players can expect to find in the different types of virtual card packs in the game. And last year, the FIFA developers have launched a tool called FIFA Playtime, which allowed players (or their parents) to monitor and control the time and money they spent in the game.
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