The Security Service of Ukraine shut down a huge warehouse full of mining equipment. Originally, the Ukranian authorities seemed to believe the warehouse was a massive cryptocurrency mining operation. Instead, it turned out to be a FIFA Ultimate Team grinding operation.
Massive Ukranian Warehouse Running PS4 FIFA Bots Shut Down
The story comes directly from the Security Service of Ukraine, but was translated over at Eurogamer. This warehouse was running nearly 4,000 PlayStation 4 consoles, which aren’t exactly proper crypto-mining machines. However, a warehouse stocked with PlayStations is a great FIFA booster pack farm.
In Ultimate Team, which shows up in multiple EA Sports titles, players earn virtual currency to open card packs which help build out and up your team. Obviously, premium purchasing is involved, and some cards can be super rare. Therefore, there’s a digital black market in which selling souped-up FIFA accounts is profitable.
In this case, the warehouse wasn’t manned with thousands of FIFA experts grinding out booster packs. Rather, each PlayStation was controlled via PC bots, making running this hustle a matter of PlayStation Plus subscriptions, electricity and probably some nightmarish maintenance.
The SBU hasn’t commented further on the matter, but considering how common things like this are all over the world (despite publisher attempts at interference), it isn’t a huge surprise to see it on this scale.
Related: NVIDIA Fights GPU Scarcity With New Card Built for Crypto Mining
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