FIFA 21 devs confirm \u201cquestionable activity\u201d following EA Gate card selling allegations EAEA SPORTS have seriously clamped down on FUT coin and card sellers recently, but one of their own employees has allegedly been caught selling FIFA 21 ICONs. Now, EA Gate has started trending on social media and the company is investigating the scandal. Previously, the developers took measures to ensure that trading outside of their own market was nigh on impossible. First, they removed the old FUT trades to stop people selling cards, then came the price ranges, and the list goes on. In court cases, EA even claimed in-game items could never be sold for real money. The only system to buy things in FIFA 21 and previous games has been to purchase FIFA Points, buy some packs, and try your luck at packing a good player. On March 10, however, some serious allegations have spread across Twitter like wildfire. Based on these accusations, which include screen shots and various evidence, EA SPORTS have put out a statement confirming that they are investigating the matter. EA responds and promises \u201cthorough investigation\u201d Following backlash across social media from fans and partnered content creators alike, EA SPORTS have released their own official response to the situation. This suggests that the evidence is strong enough to be taken seriously, but gives little information about possible suspects within the company. As EA\u2019s FIFA account explains, the developers are cognizant of the allegations being spread and bothered enough to conduct a \u201cthorough investigation.\u201d Confirming that this work is already underway, EA promised that \u201cswift action\u201d of consequences will be delivered and that they will continue updating the FIFA community as the investigation develops. In the first update on their official blog, they confirmed \u201cquestionable activity\u201d happened and vowed to \u201ctake action\u201d against any employee found guilty. \u201cEarlier this week, we were made aware of suspicious activity relating to highly rated content in FIFA Ultimate Team. We learned that FUT items were granted to individual accounts that did not earn them through gameplay. \u201cIt appears that one or more EA accounts, which were either compromised or being used inappropriately by someone within EA, directly entitled items to these individual accounts.\u201d They also promised to remove items and ban plays who acquired them through illicit means. \u201cWhen our investigation is completed, we will take action against any employee found to have been engaging in this activity. Any 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.\u201d EA Gate trends over FIFA 21 card selling The hashtag \u2018EA Gate\u2019 started trending, as leaked direct messages claim to show a conversation between what is allegedly an EA employee selling Ultimate Team cards for real cash. These can be seen below, in a tweet from FUTArcade. It must be noted that at this stage, nothing has been proven in relation to this case \u2014 although things are serious enough to have gotten EA\u2019s attention. In the conversation, they say: \u201cPeople are paying $2500 for R9 (Ronaldo) Moments and $1000 for Gullit Moments just to get them listed on the market.\u201d Another message reads: \u201cAt the moment we have two packages and they are three ICONs or three ICONs plus TOTY.\u201d According to these screenshots, these sales would cost a player $750-1000 of real cash. A special thanks to @RiberaRibell for the picture , he did an amazing work\u2764\ufe0f (continue in the comments)#fut #fifa pic.twitter.com\/bJIg2rpWtI\u2014 Arcade-Fut (@FutArcade) March 10, 2021 FIFA 21 community reacts A number of FIFA 21 streamers \u2013 some of which have been pushing for transparency on potential gambling in FIFA for a while \u2013 have come out to condemn the actions. Nepenthez said: \u201cUltimately it exposes a huge fucking problem with FUT at the moment, to the fact EA employees are (allegedly) having to SELL Icons for people to have a chance of using them. Needs changing.\u201d I know social media is going to have a field day with the memes and jokes, but ultimately it exposes a huge fucking problem with FUT at the moment, to the fact EA employees are (allegedly) having to SELL Icons for people to have a chance of using them. Needs changing. \u2014 NepentheZ (@NepentheZ) March 10, 2021 On top of that, streamer Nick28T added: \u201cSo we grind\/trade\/open packs and can\u2019t touch these PIM players but EA employees sell them to people secretly for $1,700?!?! LOL I respect the grind but my god\u2026\u201d EA has said in court that ultimate team items cannot be purchased or sold for real money. If EA employees are actually selling PIMs to people, it could open EA up to legal troubles. \u2014 FUT Watch (@FutWatch) March 10, 2021 Buyers coming forward The next development in this rapidly moving story is the moving forward of card buyers, some of which claim deals were concluded on WhatsApp. One deleted tweet said: \u201cI mean, it is true. Paid $1300 for these players on WhatsApp. Don\u2019t know how they do it but it works.\u201d It did have an image attached, but the post has since disappeared. On top of that, Nick posted another tweet with a video attached \u2013 which appears to show the card lands in the player\u2019s account as an untradeable item. Again, though, nothing has been proven in relation to an EA employee or developer being behind the potential dealings. Video proof?!? I mean this could just be an EA Dev though or an actual employee? Who knows anymore. It\u2019s all allegations, let\u2019s just hope EA makes a statement on this and stays honest with us. #FUT21 #FIFA21 pic.twitter.com\/lzqGMDE5S3 \u2014 Nick \ud83c\udde8\ud83c\udde6 (@Nick28T) March 10, 2021 EA partnered streamer speaks out One of the streamers listed in the EA Game Changers program \u2014 Karasuno Mav \u2014 has reacted to the allegations, making the case that obtaining ICON cards of this level can actually be difficult through normal means this year. Despite having the coins for a Moments Ronaldo card, there are none on the market to pick up. Touching on how this situation is inherently due to EA\u2019s stranglehold over a market that they created, Mav speaks on how EA helped cause the unsavory behavior currenly being exposed. https:\/\/twitter.com\/mavricplays\/status\/1369685484662894597?s=21 \u201cI wanted to talk about the whole ICON \u2018black market\u2019 \u2026 Now, I don\u2019t agree with it and obviously people buying ICONs is not acceptable, but at the same time, I\u2019m sorry and EA I know you\u2019re not going to want to hear this and I\u2019m a Game Changer, but this is your fault. This is literally your fault, this is all on you.\u201d We will continue to update this story as more information becomes available, particularly from EA regarding their investigation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
FIFA 21 devs confirm \u201cquestionable activity\u201d following EA Gate card selling allegations EAEA SPORTS have seriously clamped down on FUT coin and card sellers recently, but one of their own employees has allegedly been caught selling FIFA 21 ICONs. Now, EA Gate has started trending on social media and the company is investigating the scandal. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67548\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}