In this analogy, EA Sports are Tim Howard and cheating players are the ball.
It may be a futile effort, but EA Sports wants FIFA 15’s Ultimate Team mode to be a little less influenced by coin bots and cheaters. In a recent post entitled “Showing Cheaters the Red Card” (I see what they did there,) the developer addresses cheating and suggests permanent bans will be forthcoming for anybody who gets caught.
Anybody who has ever played Ultimate Team on any of the FIFA games knows that 3rd party coin sellers exist alongside special bots which comb the transfer market looking to make quick, automated deals. This kind of mechanical coin farming bogs down the servers and, obviously, rather manipulates the player/item economy. The acquisition of FIFA Ultimate Team card packs was even the driving force behind a spate of Xbox Live hacks.
EA Sports would prefer that not to happen with FIFA 15. In part because it messes with the game, and in part because EA Sports would like the only dealer of FIFA Ultimate Team coins to be EA Sports.
The article states that anybody found to be using 3rd party bots, or buying and selling coins, will receive a permanent ban from the game. Even promoting coin selling/buying will receive this punishment. So hopefully whatever system EA Sports is using will be robust enough to avoid any false positives.
They claim to have banned “hundreds of thousands” of accounts in FIFA 14 over these matters, and suggest that they “are making security and Transfer Market health a top priority in FIFA 15 Ultimate Team.”
In addition, it’s noted that “new anti-cheating tools” will be used to detect people recording false Ultimate Team match results in the PC version of the game. This, along with using a cheat engine to boost Virtual Pro stats in Pro Clubs, will also result in a permanent ban from the game.
Without knowing the specifics it’s hard to say how effective any of these preventative methods will be, but a reduction in the the ridiculous number of transfer market bots would be welcome.
