Home Gaming FIFA 15 is bringing the banhammer down on cheaters

FIFA 15 is bringing the banhammer down on cheaters

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Whosoever-holds-this-red-card,-be-he-worthy...

I genuinely had no idea that there was a rife amount of cheating in FIFA games, until my bastard senses started tingling. Apparently, there’s a massive market for buying tokens to access content, with chaps farming away the hours to create coins to sell. EA isn’t happy with that, and they’ll be showing such players a red card.

In an open letter to FIFA players entitled ‘Showing Cheaters The Red Card’, EA explained that they’ll be cracking down on these FIFA Ultimate Team scams, bots and anyone who buys or sells coins through third-party websites. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept, coins in FIFA can be earned by playing matches and trading players. Spend some of that coin and you can purchase all new stuff in the game.

There’ll be a three-step process for anyone caught buying or promoting coins:

FIFA cards

  • Step 1 (Warning) – Warning email and in-game message.
  • Step 2 (Yellow Card) – Reset of FIFA Ultimate Team club and FIFA Points returned
  • Step 3 (Red Card) – Permanent ban from FIFA online

Players who sell coins or make use of bots however, get banned outright:

  • Step 1 (Straight Red) – Permanent online ban for all EA games

According to the letter, bots have been a particular thorn in the side of EA. “The FIFA Ultimate Team infrastructure is designed to provide an optimal experience with human parameters in mind,” the letter read.

However, our data shows that these bots generate four times as many Transfer Market searches than all human FUT players combined. This severely impacts the game and your playing experience on a daily basis. The use of bots and third-party bot services to automatically buy Transfer Market items in order to gain an unfair advantage is a form of cheating. Gamers detected using bots, third-party bot services, or scripts for any purpose will be subject to our ban process.

EA says that they’ve so far banned “hundreds of thousands of FIFA accounts” since February 2014 for buying and selling coins. The new warning system on the other hand, is designed to help raise awareness of the illicit act of buying virtual money for a game wherein virtual teams of actors get paid enough cash to end world hunger for kicking a digital ball around on a digital pitch for 90 minutes, as FIFA Ultimate Team producer Marcel Kuhn explained to CVG:

We’ve been taking counter-measures in the background for a while now, but now it’s just reached a point that we want to make sure everybody understands what’s going on, so when we start banning people or taking action people see that they’re not the victims here.

We want to make sure they’re educated in what they’re actually participating in and what this causes for the whole game that they actually love, because first and foremost they’re playing it because they love the game.

There’ll also be bans for players caught “match cheating” with false recorded match details on PC and the use of any exploits to boost player stats. But it’s fascinating how games such as this can kick up a small economy overnight, with businesses popping up to make some coinage…in the game.

Last Updated: August 25, 2014

9 Comments

  1. Good, very good!

    Reply

  2. Jonah Cash

    August 25, 2014 at 07:52

    Now if they will just sort out their servers!!! FUT is almost always unplayable on PS4, I have gone back to playing Seasons online!!
    And stop what is referred to as “scripted matches”… If you find yourself in one of those matches and you are on the wrong end just quit!! You can tackle the guys players the ball just bounces back to the tackled player or his team mates, the keeper becomes impossible to beat and your keeper becomes David James….

    Reply

    • Hammersteyn

      August 25, 2014 at 08:07

      hehe David James

      Reply

  3. Kensei Seraph

    August 25, 2014 at 07:58

    “For $24,99 you can buy the Sanctioned Advantage pack.
    This will grant you increased run speed, increased ball accuracy and increased ball handling.”
    – random EA exec.

    Reply

    • Admiral Chief Assassin

      August 25, 2014 at 08:18

      That is a lot of ball features

      Reply

  4. Kensei Seraph

    August 25, 2014 at 08:02

    Gold selling is nothing special in any MMORPG but I’ve never heard it called cheating.

    To be honest I just think EA is annoyed that someone is already offering a service that they intend to implement and is doing it at a much cheaper rate than what EA is intending to offer it at.

    Reply

  5. Hammersteyn

    August 25, 2014 at 08:09

    Too bad we can’t show EA any cards, like warning for SimCity or yellow for Dungeon Keeper. Straight red for Peter Moore obviously. He has shown his studs way to many times when tackling gaming issues.

    Reply

    • Xcalibersa

      August 25, 2014 at 09:07

      You can. Dont buy there product.

      Reply

  6. Trebzz

    August 25, 2014 at 10:13

    Howard Webb or Ashley Young should be here.

    Reply

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