Investigation: How EA FC 25 hackers are ruining the FUT market
Dexerto / EA SPORTSThe EA FC 25 market is being ruined by PC players using cheats to rack up coins, making star players unavailable to those who play by the rules. After speaking to traders and investigating Discord servers, Dexerto’s EA FC expert Nathan Warby discovered more about the underhand practice.
If you’re playing EA FC 25 on PC, you may have noticed that the Ultimate Team market differs greatly from the shared PlayStation and Xbox market. Lower-rated fodder players are worth a fraction of their console counterparts, while meta cards are virtually extinct.
For example, Kylian Mbappe, particularly upgraded versions, can barely be found on PC at all, even if you search all the way up to his maximum coin limit. The reason for this is simple – hackers are cheating their way to millions of in-game coins, drastically altering the value of each card in the process.
Discussing the situation, well-known trader ‘Jake_FutTrading’ explained to me that players are using cheats to earn the best FUT Champions rewards in “less than an hour” on multiple “burner” accounts. This virtually guarantees them around 400,000 coins per account, which they then transfer back to their ‘main’ account.
“This causes a MASSIVE amount of inflation on the most meta cards in the game, most [cost] one million or more, and lowers the cost of everything else,” Jake added. “It makes having a good team possible, but an amazing team near impossible.”
Fellow Ultimate Team trader Charlie ‘Tropi’ also spoke to me, explaining exactly how this huge influx of coins to a handful of accounts is altering the prices.
“What we are seeing is essentially an infinite number of coins injected into the market. This is unnatural, and as such, the market is affected,” he said. “Simply put, there is more supply and coins injected into the market, and not enough demand from the smaller player base to keep up.”
The working theory among traders is that cheaters are one of the main causes of this issue, but proving it is another matter. With this in mind, I joined the Discord of a well-known hack distributor to investigate further.
Not only did this uncover explicit mentions of the FUT Champs trick, where players would use it to farm coins on multiple accounts, but it also offered some insight into exactly how they manipulate the game to their advantage.
One of the most common cheats mentioned allowed them to adjust the strengths and weaknesses of certain gameplay elements, known as ‘sliders.’
Dexerto / Discord“Reduce your shot error to 1. Maybe increase shot power to 60 ish, but I feel any more than that is too obvious,” one hacker recommended – this would make their shots infinitely more accurate.
They added: “Trying to find the balance myself of giving my opponent normal settings but me having a clear edge.”
There were also multiple mentions of a hack that instantly disconnected the opposing player. This means that all they would have to do is score one goal to take the lead, then boot their opponent from the match to be given a quick and easy win.
This would also explain how they are able to get through so many matches in such a short space of time, as they can use sliders to turn the match in their favor before ending the game early instead of having to play out the full 20 or so minutes.
Dexerto / DiscordBased on other conversations witnessed in this Discord channel, I can confirm that hackers were using these tricks on multiple accounts to complete FUT Champions repeatedly. This appears to be done by creating a brand-new account and exploiting EA Play Pro, which gives you access to EA FC 25 for no extra cost.
Then, once all of the games have been played and they’ve earned a huge amount of coins on the burner account, they will transfer the coins back to their main Ultimate Team account. While against the T&Cs of the mode, and EA do have measures in place to identify the more obvious cases, this is mostly done by listing a player on the main profile before using one of the burners to purchase it for way over the odds.
Obviously, the rewards will vary based on which players are packed, but I witnessed one player bragging that they had made two million coins in a single weekend, and this wasn’t their first time.
Dexerto / DiscordSo, although the smaller player base and other factors might be playing a role, it’s clear that EA FC 25 Ultimate Team market on PC is being drastically affected by hackers and their exploits.
We’re already seeing this take effect just over a month after EA FC 25’s launch, and traders have painted a bleak picture if it’s allowed to continue for much longer.
“We normally see a less stable market for PC as the player base begins to dwindle out throughout the game cycle, said Tropi. “However, it’s quite clearly going to be a huge mess a lot earlier on unless EA cracks down promptly.”
Jake agreed: “If EA don’t stop the hackers, building your true ‘Ultimate Team’ quickly won’t be possible. Top cards will be completely unattainable if you are a ‘casual’ player.’ The best chance of getting them will be buying coins, but this is against the Terms of Service.”
We contacted EA Sports for comment.