Stop the hackers: How EA FC 25’s cheating scandal shocked me

Virtually all online games have had to deal with cheaters at one time or another, and EA FC 25 is no exception. But after investigating further and digging into exactly how it’s done, I can’t believe the extent to which hackers are ruining Ultimate Team.

If you’re a PC player, running into a hacker in a multiplayer title is par for the course. The likes of Call of Duty and even Dragon Ball Sparking Zero have been plagued by players looking to gain an unfair advantage.

As a PS5 player, this is something that, mercifully, rarely affects me, unless I dare to enable my crossplay settings. Although I knew that the PC version of EA FC 25 would no doubt have its fair share of nefarious players, it wasn’t until I pulled back the curtain that I truly understood how big of an issue it really is.

Following some unusual market activity that saw meta players going virtually extinct on the Ultimate Team PC market, many traders speculated that hackers were to blame. The working theory was that they were using multiple burner accounts to complete FUT Champions multiple times, then transferring the coins back to their main account.

To prove this, I joined the Discord channel of a prominent cheat provider. After spending days watching them discuss tricks and tips, I was shocked to see just how many different ways they can manipulate the game and how calculated it is.

EA Sports

In an FPS like Warzone, the exploits are pretty self-explanatory; they let you see enemies at all times and often prevent you from taking any damage. But in a football sim like EA FC, it’s not always as easy to spot whether you’re opponent is cheating or how they are bending matches in their favor.

From what I saw, the answer is a mod that lets them change the gameplay sliders. Using these, cheaters can adjust the settings of the game to suit their needs, including changing the way their players and their opponent’s players behave in a match.

For example, in one conversation I witnessed, a hacker encouraged players to decrease their “Shot Error” to the lowest setting, which essentially makes their shots impossibly accurate regardless of aim or power. This means that every time they shoot from a plausible position, the chances are it will fly into the top corner.

This is something that many players may have suspected in certain Ultimate Team matches, but it can be tough to tell if an opponent is cheating or just incredibly skilled. One of the reasons this doubt exists is because the hackers deliberately tweak the settings in ways that aren’t “too obvious,” as multiple Discord messages testified to.

After deploying these tactics in FUT Champions to earn the best rewards, before repeating it again and again on multiple accounts, hackers can earn a staggering number of coins at once. One of the most vocal members of the Discord chat boasted that they made two million coins from a single Weekend League.

Dexerto / Discord

This unnatural influx of coins to specific accounts drives the cost of the best players in EA FC 25 up and up to the point that many meta cards are virtually impossible to get. For example, upgraded Kylian Mbappe cards are virtually extinct on the market at the time of writing and have been for weeks.

Witnessing all this firsthand has certainly been an eye-opening experience. While the console market fluctuates, and we’ve all matched against players who don’t seem entirely legit, I couldn’t have predicted the lengths that hackers will go through or the scale of the issue. The channel I joined had just shy of 1,000 members, and that’s just a single provider.

So what’s the answer? EA FC 25 does use an anti-cheat system that is designed to detect and flag accounts that aren’t playing fair. But it’s clear too many hackers are still slipping through the net and causing major issues, especially in Ultimate Team’s more competitive modes.

Plus, since the main trick appears to be using cheats on burner accounts and transferring the coins, even if the software does flag a suspicious account, they can easily start another one as quickly as it gets shut down.

The only way to truly address the problem is by using the hardware banning system that Warzone has implemented in recent years. This doesn’t just ban the account and leave them free to start over. Instead, it locks their entire PC out of the game, so the only way back in is by replacing their rig.

Of course, hackers will always find a way around any defense, and even the games that use this system haven’t completely eliminated the problem. But by implementing harsher punishments, we might at least see the number of players willing to risk running cheats go down.

One thing is certain, though, EA SPORTS need to act soon. Otherwise, the PC market on EA FC 25 may never recover.