Let’s face it, a lot of things that happen within FIFA would be considered cheating in many other games. I’m not talking about exploiting broken mechanics, I’m not talking about quitting games when you’re drawing so the other person doesn’t get the win. I’m not even talking about cheating the system with community written rules like golden goal for Icon swaps.
Cheating in FUT is rife, it is happening on a huge scale and its being used to sell Patreon subscriptions to thousands if not tens of thousands of FIFA players.
It’s no secret that to own a top-level team in FIFA Ultimate Team you generally need extremely good pack luck, or you need to spend an abhorrent amount of money. This is the game we play; it has been forged over 13 years to become a tool to drive you to spend more and more money. This article is calling out the cheating, make no mistake about that, but I am fully aware that the catalyst for this cheat driven approach to making real money from a video game is 100% fuelled by the pay to win system that has been forced upon us by EA Sports.
FUT launched as a DLC in 2009 and I have to say it was an innovation. I love FUT, or rather I loved FUT. I have played every single FIFA title that has ever been released, from FIFA International Soccer to FIFA 22, there have been good FIFAs and bad FIFAs but 2009 changed it all. This new game mode was something so far beyond what we had seen from any football game (soccer for you American folk), it incorporated the fun of playing a football game with the addiction of management games. That drive to keep improving your team ran alongside the never-ending mission of learning to play the game better. In essence the game was quite literally twice as engaging as it ever had been.
Through the years FUT evolved, and mostly it was for the better. We saw new features, new game modes, we saw EA tweak the whole FUT system to make it more user friendly and more competitive with the inclusion of things like custom tactics, chemistry, fitness, stat boosting coach cards and much more, some which remains to this day, some which has seen its time and has been retired. What we also saw, although very subtly at first, was the increase in incentives to spend money.
Each year there seemed to be more “promos”, limited time periods where special versions of players (who had better performance levels in game) were available in packs. This drove the userbase to spend more money to chase those better players. This spending mentality has been driven by content creators in the FIFA scene, me included. Streamers opening thousands of pounds worth of packs to get that open player who is “meta”, or YouTubers uploading videos of them packing 5 TOTY players in an 8-minute video which makes it seem like they have super luck, when in fact they spent £10,000 on packs and cut out all the unsuccessful attempts.
This is all to say that the entire franchise has moved from being a fun mode wherein you could be both a manager and a player of your team to being the ultimate cash cow earning EA over $1 Billion per year.
So where is the cheating? Well, with the amount of money it costs to get these one in a million players from packs using FIFA points to open them, its not surprising that people have found other ways to gain in game currency so they can purchase these players from the FUT market rather than opening packs to get them.
Coin sellers
The ability to buy FUT coins is nothing new, YouTubers have been advertising coin selling websites for years on their uploads, and most people don’t have a problem with it. It is however a direct violation of the EA terms of service; therefore, it is cheating. In most games this kind of activity would most likely been seen as such. For example, an unlock all tool in Warzone, though not seen in the same light at aimbot or wallhacks, is considered to be cheating by a large portion of the player base.
Why is this not a big deal in FUT? Honestly, the answer is quite simple. EA Sports have created an environment with their money driven approach to FUT that has made them enemy number 1. Buying coins still costs you money, but it costs a lot less. For example, packing a TOTY might cost you over £1000 (this is a very generous example as for a lot of people it will cost much more) but if that same card is worth 10 million coins on the FUT transfer market, you could buy the 10 million coins needed from a coin seller for around £600, saving yourself £400 and guaranteeing yourself the player you want.
It is clear to see why there is a market for FUT coin sellers, and a lot of you reading this will not see it as cheating, but as per the ToS for FUT, it is at the very least a breach that can result in a transfer market ban on your account.
Trading Discord/Patreon Servers
Patreon is a subscription website, so it’s worth noting here that the actual Patreon service is nothing to do with cheating, it is more how it is used within the FUT community and even more so the methods that people are using to sell their Patreon subscriptions that is the problem.
For the most part trading Patreons or Discord servers are a pretty good way of making profits within the FUT eco system without spending real money within the game. I have personally used 9 such services and though some have been better than others, all have given me advice that has led to me making profit. There has, however, been a big rise in the number of choices available when it comes to joining a trading server. Every 1st of the month (new sub day for Patreon) you can see this on Twitter with the array of advertising posts from Discord owners.
With a rise in competition comes a battle to sell more subs. The main selling method is to post screenshots of feedback from current users showing their profits, however another method, and one used more commonly throughout the month to draw attention to the trader themselves is to show a pair of screenshots, one showing a callout to buy a certain player at a certain price or lower, and another showing the price that player rises to.
(disclaimer: This image does not depict a "shady" callout, it is used only to show what is meant by a discord callout, this one appears to be legitimate)
These advertising methods in themselves are not a problem, in fact calling out players who are low priced and have a likely hood of a rise is good market knowledge and makes a good trader, the problem arises when you look as some of the buy prices listed. The pattern you will see emerging from some (not all) of these traders is that they will advise buying these players for quite a significant margin below the lowest price the players are regularly available for. To win the player at this price will involve sniping. (Setting a search filer for the player under the amount you want to buy for and quickly searching until one pops up), the problem with sniping is that it is almost impossible to win a player for cheap enough to create a profitable margin because of the plague of bots that are always running through the web app to snipe players.
Here we arrive at the problem. There are so many bots or auto buyers available for FUT that it has become near impossible to snipe players manually anymore, with chrome extensions such as Shortfuts (which becomes a bot when combined with a well-set keyboard macro) and with apps such as FUT auto buyer, AI sniping assistants are all to accessible.
The reason this ties back to FUT trading services is very apparent when you take a look at it. There are far too many people buying mass amounts of certain players, for lower than their lowest market value on the day they were bought, for them to be doing it manually. If they are then using the profits made from these trades as an advert to get you to subscribe to their trading service without being upfront about their use of a sniping bot, they are lying to you and they are doing so to make you part way with money that goes into their pocket.
This doesn’t mean that they are not able to provide you with tips that will turn you a profit, but it does mean they are promising more than they can provide for a player who isn’t willing to act outside of the ToS.
For clarification and full transparency, I have personally used most of the features I have mentioned in this article, be those sniping bots, Shortfuts or the purchasing of coins, this isn’t really a condemnation of the use of them, my issue lies with them being used deceptively as an advertising tool to lure people who are disillusioned with the price of FIFA Points into a pay per month trading service under false pretences. Furthermore, I must reiterate that not all trading Discords act in this way, in fact the majority that I have seen appear to operate above board.
Is any of this really cheating? Is cheating okay when the main party hurt by it is EA? These questions certainly split people, but if you want to share your thoughts drop a comment below the article, or catch up with us on Twitter.
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