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



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EA has stopped all granting of FIFA’s discretionary content for an indefinite period of time while it investigates allegations that an employee, or at least someone involved with EA FIFA, has been selling rare FIFA 21 Ultimate Team items on a makeshift black market. for real money. gave an update on this scandal, which the community has called “EA Gate”, and explained how it has launched a “rigorous investigation” into how it could have happened and how it is narrowing down which accounts received content through this “illicit method”. “The company has also made clear that any account that has received items that were “nefariously transferred” will be permanently banned.

These items, which are intended to be obtained through gameplay or other engagement (i.e. a Twitch stream), were granted to other accounts by one or more EA accounts, which were “compromised or being used inappropriately by someone within EA “.

EA does not condone the granting of content or the purchase of items for the player in exchange for money, as “it is against the competitive integrity of the game, it is a violation of the EA User Agreement and it is not something we tolerate.”

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

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Following the investigation, EA will take action against any convicted employee and any items awarded in this manner will be removed from the FUT ecosystem and the accounts that had these items will be permanently banned.

“Regardless of these actions, we appreciate how concerning this is for all of our players, and we apologize for the impact of these inappropriate grants within the community,” EA wrote. “We also appreciate how extremely annoying and frustrating it is that this practice could come from EA. We are also angry. We know that the trust of our communities is hard-earned and based on the principles of Fair Play. This illicit activity shakes that trust. We have also made it clear since the inception of Ultimate Team that items cannot be traded outside of our game, and that is key to keeping our game safe from manipulation and bad actors. This is a violation of that principle, too. , and we will not leave it standing. “

For those unfamiliar with content awarding, it is a process where certain game items are distributed directly to a specific account. In FIFA, these items can be a player, a kit, or a consumable.

The three most common ways that content award is awarded is through global customer experience, testing and quality assurance, and discretionary content award (athletes, partners, and employees).A Worldwide Customer Experience award is for when a player accidentally deletes content, content is lost due to a glitch, or EA made a mistake, and a player is given as compensation.

Testing & QV is for when content is given for quality testing and verification. This usually happens on dedicated test servers and is not seen by the global player base, but sometimes these tests need to happen in the live environment to ensure that everything works as it should.

The Discretionary Content Award is for when EA wants to “acknowledge the contributions that certain professional footballers, famous partners, or even our own have made. [EA’s] own employees. “These items are always non-negotiable and can only be used by the account to which they were delivered.These items only represent 0.0006% of the total player items in the FIFA 21 ecosystem and have no impact on the odds of any account receiving a specific player or item through normal means.

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



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