EA confirms 'one or more EA accounts' is behind the FIFA 21 trading scandal

A footballer prepares to head the ball — (Image credit: EA)

Several days ago the hashtag #EAGate began trending on Twitter as multiple people shared evidence suggesting an employee of EA had been profiting from FIFA Ultimate Team by selling icons—in-game star players—for hundreds, even thousands of dollars. EA announced that an investigation was underway, and now has provided an update on its progress, confirming, "It appears that one or more EA accounts, which were either compromised or being used inappropriately by someone within EA, directly entitled items to these individual accounts."

The update explains that certain EA accounts have the ability to gift icons directly, whether to rectify a technical issue for a customer, for quality evaluation on dedicated test accounts, and for "discretionary content granting" to "certain Pro Footballers, celebrity partners, or even our own employees", though not to influencers, the update is careful to note. This discretionary content has been suspended indefinitely while the investigation continues.

"When our investigation is completed, we will take action against any employee found to have been engaging in this activity", the update says. "Any items granted through this illicit activity will be removed from the FUT ecosystem and EA will permanently ban any player known to have acquired content through these means."

EA says it will "continue to provide updates as the investigation progresses towards conclusion."

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.