During the TOTSSF Event, on Friday, June 12th reset time a bug appeared momentarily on the Coin Packs offer, where players could buy the coin packs way more than the regular 8 times and thus gain an unfair advantage in-game. EA becoming aware of this issued a warning that while they investigate the bug, they will be suspending accounts for exploiting the issue. Today via a twitter an announcement was made on the suspended accounts in FIFA Mobile 20.
Regarding the Issue
On Friday, June 12th reset time, there was an issue with the TOTSSF Team Energy Coin Offer. If you restarted your app, your weekly limit of 8 packs was reset. This meant that players could claim unlimited TOTSSF Team Energy, which risked unbalancing the FIFA Mobile economy.
Thus with an unlimited TOTSSF Energy, players had gone to the extent of claiming cards which were exclusively P2W, thus creating an imbalance in the in-game market. There was no indication or announcement prior to making the coin packs for an unlimited amount for the users.
EA further announced that,
We understood if you accidentally bought the full limit of coin packs an additional time, totaling 16. However, we temporarily suspended user accounts who claimed the coin packs over 20 times, as this meant restarting the FIFA Mobile 20 app more than two times and hitting the purchase limit of 8 twice and continuing multiple times into a 3rd cycle.
EA acted relatively quickly with the suspensions so that users don’t have an unfair advantage and exploit and unbalance the market. Since the users were intentionally exploiting the game, according to the game’s Terms of Service, therefore the temporary suspension as warranted.
To balance the situation and keep the integrity of the game intact, there were as suspensions as fierce as 100-hour suspensions handed out.
FIFA Mobile 20 Account Suspensions
According to EA, the following actions would be taking place in-game, as a consequence.
- Coins used to purchase the additional packs will be granted back.
- TOTSSF Team Energy will be removed from users who utilized the exploit over 20 times.
- If you spent some/all of the TOTSSF Team Energy before you were suspended, all the TOTSSF Team Energy you currently have will be removed, plus the TOTSSF Points equalling the discrepancy.
- If you do not have enough TOTSSF Team Energy or TOTSSF Points to be deducted from your account, suspensions will be extended based on the debt owed.
There were players that not only took advantage of the exploit but tried to reap their rewards before any action could be taken against them. These users now have a debt of TOTSSF Points that EA is unable to retrieve back. They are still taking further account suspensions against them based on the severity of their TOTSSF Points debt.
Suspensions based on TOTSSF Points Debt
- Light TOTSSF Energy/Points debt users will be suspended until Thursday, June 18th after reset.
- Low TOTSSF Energy/Points debt users will be suspended until Saturday, June 20th after reset.
- Medium TOTSSF Energy/Points debt users will be suspended until Monday, June 22nd after reset.
- High TOTSSF Energy/Points debt users will be suspended until Wednesday, June 24th after reset.
- Extreme TOTSSF Energy/Points debt users will be suspended for 2 weeks or 1 month, depending on severity.
According to EA, the suspension extension for users with a TOTSSF Points debt is appropriate to the values owed, as well as appropriate punishment for exploiting the game. The FIFA Mobile team has further decided in adapting to utilize temporary suspensions instead of permanent bans. Basing their decision on both feedback and fitting the punishment to be more appropriate with the situation.
Aftermath
Despite being a reputed game, FIFA Mobile has never been bug-free. People have exploited the in-game issues many times. From buying players in the market through auto-clickers to cheating in the POTM Tournament, EA has been exposed to exploits more than often thus affecting the regular in-game players.
This has been one of the few occasions, where a prompt and severe action was taken. Although warned earlier on the official discord community, players still exploited the bug in order to get their favorite UTOTSSF Players.
There was a widespread disappointment earlier in the community due to a lack of enough gem packs in the UTOTSSF Event. Unlike previous years, all of the UTOTSSF Players were not made Free to Play obtainable and the ones like Messi and Lewandowski were heavily Pay to Win. When asked the reason, the community managers had the following to say.
So it is quite understandable, post an update when the coin packs bug appeared, many users took full advantage of it exploiting to their free will to get their favorite players. In spite of the warning made of the FIFA Mobile 20 accounts being suspended, many users worldwide abused the issue and are now sadly facing the consequences.
With a fair of the community resenting the ban and account suspensions, EA has notified that if a future issue arises where an exploit is available, acting upon it will meet further consequences. They are still investigating the extreme abusers more intensively to make the game more and more transparent.
The game, with a widely popular fanbase, is meant to be played fairly without any hacks or cheats. And EA expects the same from its players under any circumstances.
Please feel free to ask any questions in the comments section below, we’ll make sure to reply to everyone.
Make sure to follow GamingonPhone on Twitter, and Instagram for more gaming news. And if you are looking for a group of mobile gamers to hang out, jump into our Discord server today.
What of those that have already hacked???
Hackers are always investigated by the dev team and when found are immediately removed from the game. This on the other hand was an exploit of a in-game bug and thus resulted in temporary bans.