Game publisher EA makes a lot of money from selling FIFA football games every year, but that revenue increased considerably when it introduced Ultimate Team cards. These cards are so desirable, even an EA employee started selling them on the side. Now a card farming operation has been discovered and shut down in Ukraine.
As Kotaku reports, when Ukranian police initially raided a warehouse in the city of Vinnytsia, they thought it was a crytocurrency mining operation. However, the shelves were stacked with 3,800 PS4 Slim consoles, which offer nowhere near enough processing power for today’s Bitcoin miners. Instead, it looks as though they were being used to farm FIFA Ultimate Team cards and in-game currency.
Ukranian website Delo reports (translated) that the consoles had been setup to automatically play FIFA in a bid to earn in-game currency that can then be used to purchase Ultimate Team cards or sold for real cash. If lucky, purchased cards contain one of the rarer cards which can then be sold at a huge profit. With so many consoles setup to automatically play the game, there’s a good chance a few rare cards will be discovered.
The original Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) report lists that alongside all the PS4 consoles, the warehouse contained 500 graphics cards, 50 processors, and “notebooks, phones, flash drives.” So there could have been some cryptocurrency mining going on, but not of any real significance. And just like Bitcoin miners in Malaysia, this warehouse was stealing its electricity, but this time by using electric meters that didn’t register consumption. The individuals running this operation are yet to be caught and identified.
