FIFA Red Card

EA Sports is breaking out the ban hammer for potential FIFA 15 scammers and coin bots, and they aren't being very lenient this time around either. In a recent post on their website, the publisher outlined how exactly players caught participating in coin re-selling or farming will be punished, promising that repeat offenders will lose more than just their stolen cash.

According to the post, those gamers who either buy coins or promote coin buying will be subject to a three-strike punishment system. Exhaust all of those strikes and face serious gaming consequences.

The first offense will result in a warning e-mail and an in-game message – no genuine harm, no foul. The second offense, however, will lead to a FIFA Ultimate Team reset and all FIFA points will be forfeit. In essence, EA Sports is wiping your bunk team clean and removing any of your stolen or illegally procured cash.

And finally, for those who do get caught a third time, EA Sports will hit them with a permanent FIFA Online ban. That doesn't mean for just FIFA 15 either, but the entire FIFA franchise moving forward.

FIFA Ultimate Team Punishments

However, this three-strike plan is only for coin buyers or promoters. Those who are caught selling or farming coins – by any means – will be hit with an instant ban from ALL EA GAMES. Not just FIFA, not just EA Sports, but also every game published under the Electronic Arts banner – from Battlefield all the way to Mass Effect.

Obviously, with FIFA Ultimate Team's success has come some unexpected results, namely the exploitation of the real money coin system. Ultimate Team has become a mini-business for EA Sports, and as a result coin farming has spun off into its own mini-business. So much so, in fact, that people are willing to hack other gamer's FIFA accounts to charge points to their username and then reclaim those points for themselves.

But, since it's such a popular portion of the FIFA infrastructure, EA Sports would rather not do away with Ultimate Team. So, instead they've tightened security and login measures, and instituted these harsher punishments to hopefully scare potential scammers away. We'll see if it works when FIFA 15 releases next month.

How do you feel about EA Sports' punishments for FIFA cheaters? Have you been affected by any phishing or coin re-selling?

FIFA 15 releases September 23, 2014 for current-gen and last-gen platforms.

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Source: EA Sports