EA Sports FIFA

There apparently is a black market for video game coins. It also is apparently a lucrative one, so much so that it got the attention of the FBI and sports video game giant Electronic Arts.

At issue appears to be a scheme in which hackers were mining coins in the popular FIFA ’16 game made by EA Sports, turning around and then selling them inside Europe and China at a profit of between $13 and $18 million.

Given that coins can be purchased with real money in EA’s games (including FIFA), it’s only natural that a black market exists for them.

From the article:

FIFA coins are the controversial in-game currency of EA’s popular soccer series, used to buy player packs within FIFA games. You can earn FIFA coins either by playing matches or spending real money to buy them in the game. They’re also very popular in the third-party marketplace; a cursory google search for “FIFA coins” will bring up nothing but third-party sellers, including an entire subreddit dedicated solely to trading coins.  

Anthony Clark, one of the three men being charged by the FBI, is slated to begin his trial on Monday in a Texas courtroom. He is being charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and given the large sum of money alleged to have been profited, it is easy to see why Clark and his buddies were on the FBI’s radar.

Clark, along with the other co-defendants, decided to cheat the game, mimicking matches, collecting coins, and then selling them to third-party vendors:

“(they) allegedly built a tool that would send false signals to EA’s servers to spoof matches, generating these FIFA coins at a rapid rate. The FBI alleges that Clark and crew then sold the coins to third-party sellers, earning millions. The alleged scheme began at some point in 2013 (“exact date unknown”) and continued until September 17, 2015, when the FBI began seizing property and investigating this case.”

Who knew playing a soccer video game would actually become big business…just illegally so?

[Kotaku]

About Andrew Coppens

Andy is a contributor to The Comeback as well as Publisher of Big Ten site talking10. He also is a member of the FWAA and has been covering college sports since 2011. Andy is an avid soccer fan and runs the Celtic FC site The Celtic Bhoys. If he's not writing about sports, you can find him enjoying them in front of the TV with a good beer!