Hello FIFA fans.

With FIFA 15 on the horizon, we’d like to take some time to remind everyone about the rules of the game and introduce you to some actions we’ll be taking to address cheating in EA SPORTS™ FIFA titles.

Although they are a minority amongst FIFA fans, cheaters disrupt the gameplay experience and enjoyment for honest FIFA fans in a number of ways. These include things like overloading servers, phishing and compromising other player accounts, and participating in the unauthorised exchange of virtual currency. It’s time for us to draw a clear and strong line against cheaters who negatively impact the FIFA experience for our millions of players online.

       FIFA Ultimate Team™ (FUT)The Effects of "Bots" on Ultimate Team.

Aside from manipulating in-game exploits in FIFA Ultimate Team, cheaters use online tools known as “bots” to automatically buy items off the Transfer Market and farm coins with the intention to sell. These illicit coins are often sold online for real money through Coin Selling websites.

As most of you know, trading in the FUT Web App (the online web portal for FIFA Ultimate Team) has been unavailable since May 9th 2014. We chose to deactivate Web App trading due to the severe Transfer Market search issues caused by coin-farming bots.

Bots make an incredibly high number of Transfer Market searches and bids at rates significantly higher than what is humanly possible. The FUT infrastructure is designed to provide an optimal experience with human parameters in mind.

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 and leads to side effects that you may have experienced, such as…
The use of bots and 3rd 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, 3rd party bot services, or scripts for any purpose will be subject to our ban process below.

Since February 2014, we’ve banned hundreds of thousands of FIFA 14 accounts for coin selling and buying. Our goal is to educate our fans about the dangers of coin selling and buying while informing all players of our Terms of Service and ban process.

The following outlines the banning process for accounts that violate our Terms of Service.
To check if your account has been banned, please access your EA SPORTS Football Club Alerts from the FIFA 14 main menu for a notification. An email will also be sent to your Origin email address within 24-72 hours of action being taken, including an account ban.

If you believe you were wrongfully banned, you can dispute your ban here.

Promoting Coin Selling Sites

The promotion of coin selling websites is also against our Terms of Service. If you see a video that promotes coin-selling please report it along with the gamer’s Xbox/PSN gamertag or Origin ID so we can investigate:
fifaplayfair@ea.com
Risks of Buying Coins

Some gamers choose to buy coins in order to gain an upper hand in FUT. However, buying coins diminishes the enjoyment of FUT for all players, creates an unfair advantage, and impacts the balance of the game.

Participating in coin buying can be unsafe. Some coin sellers have been found to be involved in phishing and account compromise activities. We are not and never have been affiliated with any coin seller or coin selling websites, and cannot take responsibility for your personal information being compromised as a result of any transaction you undertake with these sites.

Please follow these tips to keep your FUT account as safe as possible. On Origin, setting a new Security Question and registering for Two-Factor Authentication will also greatly improve the safety of your account.

Our Next Steps

Moving forward, we will be more proactive in taking action, including banning accounts, against players engaged in coin buying, coin selling, coin promoting, and the use of bots.

Our main goal is to counteract bots and resolve in-game exploits used to farm coins. This is an on-going process but the wheels are already in motion. Our team is constantly investigating ways to track them and keep them out of FUT.

As we work to improve FIFA 14 Ultimate Team, we are making security and Transfer Market health a top priority in FIFA 15 Ultimate Team.

PC Match Cheating

"Match cheating" is a method cheaters use to record false match results in FIFA Ultimate Team on PC. We’re currently investigating new anti-cheating tools and measures to implement in the future. Gamers caught match cheating on PC will receive a permanent FIFA online ban.

Pro Clubs

In Pro Clubs, a mode played by some of our most dedicated fans, cheaters use exploits to boost the stats of their in-game avatars known as Online Virtual Pros. In FIFA 14, we’ve been able to make progress in terms of improving security and keeping cheaters out of Pro Clubs. Gamers caught cheating on Pro Clubs will receive a permanent FIFA online ban.

FIFA Interactive World Cup
The FIFA Interactive World Cup (FIWC) is the biggest online gaming tournament in the world. Participants from every continent battle it out to be crowned the best FIFA player.

Cheaters can falsify match results in order move up the FIWC leaderboards. To ensure a level competitive environment, the FIWC leaderboards are cleaned bi-weekly for cheaters.

As mentioned before, from here on we’ll be more proactive in upholding our Terms of Service and banning those who violate the Terms of Service. We plan on giving you regular updates on our progress against cheaters throughout the year.

Thanks,
The FIFA Team

Our full Terms of Service can be viewed here.