The Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) recently reported that Ukrainian law enforcement discovered 3,800 PlayStation 4 consoles during a raid on a mining farm in Vinnytsia that was illegally using the city’s power grid to mine cryptocurrency. According to an investigation by Ukraine business newspaper Delo, those PS4 systems, contrary to popular speculation, weren’t used for mining purposes at all. They were actually used to grind FIFA Ultimate Team, a controversial feature of EA’s football/soccer franchise that encourages players to either spend real money or waste lots of time accumulating in-game currency to acquire better players. It’s believed that the PS4 consoles were controlled by PCs running bots to farm FIFA Ultimate Team for profit.
How much does EA earn from Ultimate Team across FIFA, Madden and NFL?
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) May 26, 2021
EA Net Revenue from Ultimate Team:
FY 2021: $1.62bn
FY 2020: $1.49bn
FY 2019: $1.37bn
FY 2018: $1.18bn
FY 2017: $775m
FY 2016: $660m
FY 2015: $587m
The majority is from FIFA Ultimate Team ofc. pic.twitter.com/xUbNUx6R62
Ultimate Team is the perfect game for this kind of operation, given how it’s structured. You can spend real-world money on loot boxes in the hope of obtaining high-value cards, but the odds of getting one of the best players is soul-destroyingly slim. Or, you can play the game for months on end in a bid to save up enough of the in-game currency to splash out on the auction house. Or, you can buy FUT coins on the black market (expect 40,000 FUT coins to cost you a couple of quid).