Hello everyone,
I have been playing since FIFA 17, with the last three games (EA FC 24,25 and 26) on PC and I have over 500 hours on FC 26.
With that said, the hacking situation in UT Champions has never been this bad, even in the previous installments that I have played on PC. In previous installments I also have encountered hackers, but it was only sometimes, about once every two or three weekends. This year I encounter them at least once or twice EVERY TOURNAMENT.
It is always the same common and well known method or hack that has been used for months now, which works by taking over the controls and disabling the movement of the opponents (the victims) players, running through on goal and scoring. I am not sure how exactly the hack works, but it seems to abuse the co-op feature somehow and allows the hacker to join the victims team with several fake players/accounts, which results in the AI/victim to not be able to control their teams movement, therefore disabling it completely. Also the hackers are sometimes using offensive or even racist names for these "fake players" in order to troll their victims, which I personally don't care about but which might be very hurtful to other players. Additionally there was one particular occurrence where a hacker was able to fully close/crash my game remotely after I refused to quit after conceding, with ME ironically receiving a disconnect/fair play warning after restarting the game (or it might be because my players couldn't move and I got disconnected due to inactivity, so the hacker didn't directly cause my game to crash, even though to my knowledge the game shouldn't fully close/crash if you get disconnected due to inactivity, so idk). I have provided a video and several screenshots below to proof my allegations and in order to also show that this is not an isolated occurrence. I actually have even more recordings/screenshots that I can provide if necessary, plus there were also several more instances in the past that I did not manage to catalogue.
I get that players on console probably don't care about this because they can just turn off cross-play and avoid hackers, but I can't do that as I am playing on PC, which is where the hackers (i assume) mostly operate. An additional issue is that the report system in the game is pretty convoluted, requiring you to go through the EA App to report them, where it is also not possible to attach any evidence. Also it is impossible to know if the name that the hacker displays in-game is the actual username of his real account or if he is using a masked, stolen or "smurf" account. On top of that after you submit a report there are no updates whatsoever about its status, so you never know whether someone actually did something and banned the hacker or if the report was simply ignored. As a player you are therefore left wondering if there was actually any point in submitting the report and contributing to the integrity and fairness of the community, as there is nothing more left to do besides to block that particular account, which is also kind of pointless due to how widespread the issue is (I would even like to contribute more in order to ensure that these hackers get some kind of consequences, but unfortunately I cannot attach evidence to back up my allegations and doxxing the hacker is unfortunately illegal). Today I also have looked up some of the accounts that I have reported using the available methods, but it seems like the accounts have not been banned and are still active (so either it is a stolen/unrelated account or EA did not act upon the report).
Lastly I would like to mention that it seems that some hackers are even offering their services on third-party websites like X.com, promising players to get a certain amount of wins in UT Champions or rewards in exchange for real-life currency. I have attached proof for these ads as screenshots (called "boosting ad 1-3") as well, however I censored the names of the accounts as I can't proof beyond reasonable doubt that these accounts are actually connected to hackers or are using hacks in order to fulfill their clients demands (however there is reason for suspicion, as some of these accounts also advertise selling coins, which to my knowledge also is not possible without hacks). While you might argue that these particular posts have not garnered many views and therefore are not significant, I would like to add that the posts that are more popular usually get deleted, or the hackers pay other more popular accounts to promote them in promo posts, which later get deleted as well (so the posts shown in the screenshots are only the ones that remain and only are "the tip of the iceberg"). Apart from the obvious issues that this behaviour goes against the TOS, this could result in some players losing their account or losing money in scams. While I understand that EA is not responsible for posts and actions of people on third-party websites, I would like to imagine that if the hacking issue is addressed in-game and hackers get banned, this would drastically reduce the amount of these promotions and the amount of people that get scammed.
Overall the widespread amount of encounters with hackers and the seeming lack of action by EA against them makes me worried about the corruption of the player base/tournaments/integrity of the game and about the security of my account. If the anti-cheat is this bad at preventing hackers from abusing the most competitive game mode consistently and over a long period of time (several months), who says that they are not able to compromise my whole account or even get my private/payment information that is tied to it? Due to how many hackers I encounter every weekend I have missed out on so many rewards every time (instead of possibly getting 9 or 10 wins I got 8 or 7 wins for several weeks in a row by now), making the experience very frustrating and discouraging for me. Why should I put time and effort (and possibly money) into the game if my progress is virtually "capped" and I am prevented from getting better rewards? Why should I even bother trying to act in line with the TOS or contribute to reporting hackers if EA seemingly doesn't care and the hackers accounts remain unbanned? Why should I bother buying the game (and the in-game currency) for a lot of money if other players can get themselves an unfair advantage anyway? Why should I continue playing the game if I get so frustrated every time I get matched with a hacker, having to quit a game and get my experience ruined?
In the end I have to say that I am very frustrated, but mostly just disappointed. The marketing for this years release with the whole "we listened to you" message didn't necessarily convince me, but it made me cautiously optimistic that there may be some improvement in terms of the communication between the player base and the developers. But after playing the game for a long time now this year and with this hacking issue seemingly becoming more widespread than it ever was, without seemingly any actions or consequences from EA for several updates and despite submitting reports, it seems that even this tiny hope was in vain and everyone got fooled by the marketing yet again.
I can understand that game development and combatting hackers is hard, I can understand that these issues can never be fully resolved and that there always will be hackers that find a way to avoid the anti-cheat, I can understand that EA cannot act on a random report and ban a players account without any proof and I can understand that I can't ask for compensation just because I lost a single game once in a while and I miss out on a few rewards. But this level of negligence, ignorance and carelessness is just sad (but unfortunately not surprising), especially if you consider this years marketing and the resources at your disposal as a triple-A game developer. How are we supposed to believe you and consider buying stuff from you in the future or even (god forbid) "enjoy playing the game", if our feedback and effort to help or contribute seemingly falls on deaf ears?
In conclusion and in order to summarize, I would ask you to consider the following:
- upgrade the anti-cheat against this particular cheating method and in general
- make the reporting system easier for players to use and make hacker reporting available in-game, not just in EA App
- inform players about the hacking issue and how to report it
- inform players that their contribution is wanted and needed to improve the game experience
- make it possible for victims to submit evidence in order to confirm the legitimacy of the report
- keep victims updated on the status of the report and inform them of what action has been taken (and why), in order to improve transparency and show willingness to act
- potentially compensate victims with the in-game rewards they missed out on if the report is deemed legitimate
In my opinion those are reasonable requests that everyone can agree upon would be helpful to vastly improve the games experience and have a quite manageable scope for a company the size of EA. I personally don't think that I am alone in this sentiment as well, so I encourage everyone else to share your thoughts in order to get more attention and address this issue. Even though it has been extremely frustrating in the past to seemingly scream into the void or talk to a wall when dealing with these issues, I still will continue my efforts to help and remain hopeful that something is done to make it better. The question is whether EA are willing to demonstrate that you want to do the same.
Cheers.
P.S.: even though this isn't about me and my personal losses due to hackers are not relevant compared to addressing the hacking issues for the whole community, I would appreciate it a lot if I could get at least somewhat of a compensation for all the rewards I missed out on. According to my estimation, over the course of the ca. 9 UT Champs events that I played I have lost around 17 matches due to hackers (so around 12,5%, it would probably be higher if I was better at the game and encountered more hackers due to the "skill-based matchmaking") and have therefore missed out on ca. 100.000 coins, multiple un-/tradeable packs (like 10x84+) and player-picks, event-specific and inform packs (during the Winter Wildcard, TimeWarp, TOTY, Future Stars, Knockout Royalty, Fantasy FC and UT Birthday events) and a cosmetic evo in the season 4 champions objective). Again, I don't really care if I personally get compensated or not (even though it would be amazing and I would be very grateful), the most important thing for me is that the issues I mentioned above are addressed and fixed in the future to prevent damages for everyone.
EA SPORTS FC™ Team
