MMOEXP: Employee had been clandestinely selling FC 25
Last week, EA found itself embroiled in a scandal after it came to light that at least one company employee had been clandestinely selling FC 25 Coins card packs, which contain incredibly rare cards with low drop rates, for between $1000-2500. On Twitter, #EAGate started trending as news began to spread about this questionable activity and many gamers, particularly those who had spent large amounts of money trying to obtain these rare FC 25 Ultimate Team cards the officially sanctioned way, spoke out in anger.
EA‘s immediate response was to announce that it would be launching a thorough investigation into the alleged controversial employee activity and would ban any FC accounts that had obtained cards through this black market. Now, a few days later, EA has revealed that it has uncovered a small number of accounts engaging in questionable activity. “One or more EA accounts,” said the company, had been “used inappropriately by someone within EA,” who had granted items to these compromised accounts.
As the investigation continues, the company promises that any employee found to have sold FC 25 items to players will be reprimanded. In the meantime, EA has stopped discretionary content granting, an internal company practice that enables employees to legitimately gift in-game content to EA accounts for testing, marketing, or compensation for customer service issues.
The specifics of EA Gate came to light when a Twitter user by the name of Arcade-FC 25 Ultimate Team posted a number of screenshots of a message thread in which a customer and EA employee discussed pricing for acquiring FC 25 Team of the Year and ICONS cards, which are highly valued due to their rarity.
According to one image, this activity has been going on for years, as a message in Spanish revealed that it was an employee at EA Germany selling the cards with EA FC Coins for sale the assistance of two intermediaries and had been doing so for “at least three years that I know of.” This employee apparently needed only the buyer‘s EA or PSN ID in order to complete the transaction.