![]() ![]() In some cases these trends go beyond FIFA accumulator culture already pervades soccer and the presence, however small, of betting in FUT is a bleak side effect of this. The FUT community is slowly but surely losing patience with EA, and accusations that EA exploiting the popularity of the game while neglecting various problems within it are growing. "In my opinion, EA focuses on coin selling and promotion so much because it affects the sale of FIFA Points, which are used to buy packs."Ī post on a thread about spending money on FUT packĪfter all the hours I'd lost to fan sites and forums I still had more questions than answers, but a few things seemed clear. "EA doesn't want to admit that the real problems are coin glitches and other bugs, but most of the community believes that coin selling and coin promotion are the problem because that's what EA tells them." "Coin selling isn't FUT's main problem," he tells me. My hope was that Rodrigo Lopes, an admin at, would further illuminate the situation for me, but what he said didn't totally line up with the story I'd seen developing so far. With the lack of honest information, It was hard to get a grasp of everything that was happening in this community, so I reached out to a FUT game Julian Assange of sorts, to help me lift the lid on these undercover happenings and explain what they meant for the game in general. ![]() But why would anyone bet with coins when they could bet with actual cash? Even though gambling with virtual currency is clearly a grey area legally, the implications of it left me feeling uneasy-especially in light of the fact that ensuring users of the site were over 18 had to be extremely difficult. The Twitter bookies were clearly not eager to talk to me, but they inadvertently led me to polished websites offering the same service on a much larger scale, where you could gamble with FIFA coins to win more. However, I persevered and, channelling my inner Donal MacIntyre, slid into a coin seller's DMs. ![]() It was difficult to penetrate and its inhabitants had an inherent distrust of outsiders who might report their gamer tags to EA. Unfortunately, as I investigated more, I found myself up against this cloak-and-dagger world. But it was when I came across a niche subculture of Twitter users acting as bookmakers, taking bets with FUT coins on real-life sporting events, that I realized how deep this black market went. So, you either spend money to get ahead or get left behind.īuying coins online from third-party sites is the most popular, but by no means only, way of enhancing your team-head to an unofficial dealer and you'll find 10,000 coins (a good few hours of gameplay) selling for something like $1. Trading goes underground, and a Tour de France-style doping situation has developed where everyone playing at the top level seems to have a souped-up team. But history has shown that when there's demand for something that's not being supplied through official channels, the black market will soon find a way to prosper from the situation, and FUT is no different. In practice, neither of the "regular" means of building a FUT squad full of superstars are satisfactory-saving up takes too long, and packs are rarely worth the money. It's not hard to imagine pupils turning to dollar signs at EA HQ when they figured out they could monetize a hugely popular side of their market-leading game, leading to headlines like "My Teenager Spent $4,500 on FIFA Microtransactions" from 2015, and a more recent situation in Canada where a kid ran up a bill of over $7,000. Presuming you don't want to settle for a mediocre team-and the addictive nature of FUT means you won't-you're left with two options: either clock up an ungodly amount of hours, saving up coins, or buy player packs with the in-game currency or legal tender, a route that offers only a slim chance of bagging you a great player on the cheap. Winning a match will get you around 400 coins, and getting promoted will get you somewhere between five and ten thousand but elite players can sell for hundreds of thousands, or even millions. All sounds fairly straightforward so far, right? But things get murkier when you consider the fact that the most desirable players in FUT float on the game's own free market, with prices set by gamers themselves. You start off with an average squad of players and work your way up the ten online divisions, winning coins to spend on higher-rated acquisitions as you go. As its bombastic name suggests, FIFA Ultimate Team represents the very peak of the game's appeal for the straight-upstairs-for-a-four-hour-sesh-after-school crew. ![]()
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