In Eastern Europe, the police raided a warehouse filled with thousands of PS4 consoles. Until now, it was suspected that mining was involved, as cryptocurrencies are currently profitable. However, instead, there were fraudsters at work selling digital FIFA currency for FIFA 21.
This was the situation:
- In Ukraine, the national police seized a warehouse with 3800 PS4 consoles.
- The unknown owners had left the consoles running nonstop and had not paid a huge electricity bill. The illegal tapping of the power grid had drawn the authorities’ attention to the warehouse.
- It was previously suspected that the PS4 consoles had been used to mine cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum.
Gamers, miners, and journalists were puzzled by the mining farm, as using PS4 consoles for mining is not very economical. Graphics cards are much better suited for this purpose. Nvidia had made mining significantly harder with RTX graphics cards. However, recent reports explain that the PS4 consoles likely had a completely different task.
3800 PS4 consoles automatically play FIFA 21 as a bot network
What has happened now? An unnamed source informed the Ukrainian website “Delo” that the PS4 consoles had not been collecting cryptocurrency but instead had automatically been playing FIFA 21 (via delo.ua).
- The consoles collected player cards from FIFA Ultimate and resold them for coins.
- Subsequently, either the coins or the accounts were sold for real money.
- Each PS4 likely required PS Plus and a copy of FIFA 21. Therefore, this operation likely wasn’t very cheap.
For Electronic Arts, the company behind FIFA, FIFA Ultimate is an important source of revenue. According to Goal.com, Electronics Arts earned nearly 200 million USD from FIFA last year (via Goal.com).
What kind of currency is this? With the coins, you buy various players for your team in FIFA Ultimate, or packs that can contain player cards and other items like contracts or cosmetics. You can usually only collect these coins in-game by playing or trading – unlike the second FUT currency “FIFA Points”, which can also be purchased for real money.
However, there are always offers from coin sellers on the internet trying to sell coins to players. The fraudsters likely speculated on this point.
You should not buy FUT coins on the black market
The best players in Ultimate Team often cost several million FUT coins, which are very difficult to collect. Therefore, it is not surprising that gamers look for various ways to obtain the valuable in-game currency. There was even a story once, where an insider apparently tried to sell legendary players in FUT secretly.
That’s why you should steer clear: The publisher of FIFA, Electronic Arts, has once again pointed out that your account may be banned if you buy FUT coins illegally for your account.
So it’s best to stay away from various FUT coin offers, as you don’t know where the currency is coming from. Furthermore, there is a risk that you may no longer be able to play with your valuable account.
How to earn coins in FIFA 21 the fastest way, we explain to you here on MeinMMO. In our guide, we explain how to earn FUT coins quickly:
