Community ManagerEA Forums Online Security Newsletter - Volume 8/ 2026
Welcome to the eiight edition of EA Forums Online Security Newsletter
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of the EA Forums Online Security Newsletter!
In our previous edition, we looked at malware and gaming, including how malicious software can put accounts, personal information, saved sessions, and even valuable in-game content at risk. If you missed that discussion, you can always revisit it and share your own experiences or advice with the community.
This month, we are turning our attention to bots and automation in gaming. Bots are not automatically good or bad. Some are deliberately built into games to support players, testing, and matchmaking, while others are unauthorized tools designed to exploit systems, gain unfair advantages, or make money at the expense of genuine players. Understanding that difference can help us recognise when automation is useful — and when it becomes harmful.
Good Bots vs. Bad Bots in Gaming
When people hear the word bot, they often immediately think of cheating. In reality, a bot is simply software designed to perform actions automatically. What matters is who created it, what it is designed to do, and whether its use is authorised. Developer-sanctioned bots can improve a game, while unauthorized automation can damage competitive integrity, economies, and player trust.
Some legitimate bots are used directly in gameplay. Games may introduce AI-controlled opponents into lower-level matches so newer players can learn mechanics before facing more experienced competition. Bots can also replace players who disconnect from a team, helping a match continue without leaving the remaining players at an immediate disadvantage.
Automation is also useful behind the scenes. During development, simulated players can repeatedly connect to servers or perform actions at a scale that would be difficult to reproduce manually. This can help teams stress-test infrastructure, identify bugs, and search for unexpected behaviour or exploits before those problems affect large numbers of real players.
The problem begins when automation is used without authorization to create an advantage. In competitive games, tools such as aimbots and triggerbots can automate aiming or firing far faster and more accurately than a human player. The result is more than one unfair match: widespread automation can reduce confidence in rankings, matchmaking, and the idea that player performance reflects genuine skill.
Bots can also affect game economies. Automated accounts may continuously gather currency, materials, or valuable items and then move those resources into real-money trading markets. At scale, this can distort supply, prices, and progression for players who earn their items through normal gameplay. Similar automation can monitor marketplaces and purchase desirable listings faster than a human user could react.
Other bots focus less on gameplay and more on reaching players. Automated accounts can flood chats, forums, or game hubs with advertisements for boosting services, currency sellers, suspicious websites, or phishing attempts. When hundreds or thousands of accounts repeat the same behaviour, even a simple automated message can become an effective way to expose large numbers of players to scams.
Recognising a bot is not always straightforward. Repetitive actions, unnatural activity schedules, identical messages, extremely fast responses, or accounts following the same behaviour pattern may all raise suspicion, but none of these signs alone proves that an account is automated. As AI becomes better at generating natural-looking conversations and adapting its behaviour, the difference between a human-controlled and automated account may become even harder to recognise.
The safest approach is to focus less on proving whether someone is a bot and more on what the account is asking you to do. Treat unexpected links, offers for cheap currency, boosting services, requests for credentials, or promises that sound too good to be true with caution. Use official reporting tools when automation appears to be cheating, spamming, scamming, or manipulating a game system rather than confronting the account directly.
- How to keep your EA Account secure
- Positive Play Charter
- Report cheating, harassment, and illegal content
- EA Forums Online Security Newsletter Badge Handbook
Last month’s discussion about malware and gaming brought plenty of useful advice from the community. For this edition, we are highlighting two contributions that focused particularly well on recognising warning signs before and after a potentially dangerous download.
Recognising Malware Warning Signs
Author: rosemow
There are warning signs both before a dangerous game download that contains malware, as well as after it has infected your computer. Warning signs can include downloads from unofficial sites, security software trying to block the installation, being asked to disable protection, unexpected browser changes, unfamiliar account messages, pop-ups, changed passwords, and unusual computer sluggishness.
Recognized for:
- Separating warning signs into those that can appear before and after infection
- Providing practical symptoms players can actually recognise
Think Before You Bypass Security
Author: SharpGoblin
Warning signs of a dangerous game download might be requirements to ignore browser warnings, disable antivirus protection, add security exclusions, or run programs with administrator access. Best is to download games only from official sources.
Recognized for:
- Highlighting some of the strongest warning signs that can appear during installation
- Calling attention to software that asks users to weaken their own security protections
- Giving players a simple and memorable preventative rule: stick to official download sources whenever possible
Thank you to everyone who took part in the malware discussion and shared their advice and experiences. Every contribution helps make the newsletter more useful for players who may encounter these situations themselves.
