Accusations Of EA Employee Side-Selling 'FIFA' Rare In-Game Items Is A Problem If True

from the side-hustle dept

With so many online video games moving to models that involve selling rare items or other aspects of gameplay after the purchase of a game, it's worth noting that this concept of selling manufactured rarity isn't exactly new. In fact, one notable analogue version of this can be found in the trading card industry. And if you're looking for parallels of danger, the baseball trading card industry has that covered specifically.

A brief history lesson. While baseball cards have made something of a comeback recently, especially due to expanded trading and collecting avenues created by the internet, the industry also quite famously tanked in the '90s.

That trend has reversed in the last few years. While the baseball card industry fell from domestic sales of $1 billion in the '80s and early '90s to $200 million in 2012, Leiner says that it's now bounced back to the strongest position that it's had in two decades (though he declined to share Topps' sales numbers). That isn’t just from breaking—sales have also increased in other forms of online retail, as well as at big-box stores like Target and Walmart.

So what happened in the early '90s to tank the industry? There is more than one answer. The labor lockout of 1990 certainly hurt the trading card business. Baseball's decline as the focal national pastime contributed to it as well. But then there is also the legend of the Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card. Upper Deck quite famously made Griffey Jr. its #1 card in the 1989 set, despite him having never played a game. The other major players, such as Topps, didn't have a rookie card for him that year. There was an insane fervor around getting that rookie card when the set came out, even as it turned out to not be a particularly rare card. One explanation for the lack of rarirty is a matter of printing techniques.

Despite the popularity of the Griffey card, it was not a scarce card. The card was situated in the top left hand corner of the uncut sheets and was more liable to be cut poorly or have its corners dinged. Company policy was that if a customer found a damaged card in its package, the company would replace it.[25] Many Griffey cards were returned and the result was that Upper Deck printed many uncut sheets (sheets consisting of 100 cards) of just the Griffey card.[25] According to Professional Sports Authenticator, the Ken Griffey, Jr. would become the most graded card of all time with the company.

But there have long been rumors that something else happened. Some have suggested that those running Upper Deck's presses actually purposefully produced extra Griffey Jr. rookie cards when they were highly sought after, seeing it as a way to essentially print money. Whatever the truth, the market was flooded with this sought after card, the value of the card plummeted as a result, and a whole bunch of collectors got very angry and turned off from collecting baseball cards. Coupled with the other factors, the industry contracted to something like a quarter of its previous revenue.

Which brings us to EA Sports and accusations that at least one employee has been selling rare FIFA assets for money.

Using the hashtag #EAGATE, complaints have been made that someone within EA has been selling FIFA’s Prime Icon Moment players for huge sums of cash, like €1000 (USD$1190) for two players.

That’s a lot of money, but there are people out there who both take FIFA very seriously and spend thousands on Ultimate Team packs just trying to unlock elite players, so to be able to cut out the random factor and get the best players directly isn’t as terrible a deal as it may sound to you.

When the complaints first surfaced, it was hard to parse which were legitimate and which were just...the same white noise the FIFA community is always capable of producing when it comes to its uneasy relationship with developer EA Sports.

You could write this all off as rumor, but there is some pretty convincing evidence floating around the internet.

If you can't see the embedded tweet, it shows images that purport to be direct solicitation of rare player cards for large sums of money. And that brings us back to the lessons learned from the baseball industry: this sort of thing can destroy not only the marketplace for a single game, but for the industry as a whole.

EA says its investigating and it needs to be very transparent as to the results of that investigation. The entire part of the gaming industry that revolves around buying packs trying to get rare items only works if there is trust from the public that all of this is on the up and up. The moment that the public no longer believes in the system, it collapses. And eroding trust in a major player in this industry, such as EA Sports, is going to have a spillover effect to other publishers and studios.

Filed Under: fifa, in game assets, insider selling
Companies: ea

FIFA Orders Brazil To Overturn Ban On Selling Beer At World Cup Matches

from the I-am-the-law dept

One of the recurrent themes on Techdirt is the sense of entitlement the owners of various kinds of monopolies display, and their common belief that being able to maximize the profit from those monopolies trumps any other consideration.

For example, FIFA, the world governing body for soccer/football, uses its monopoly on organizing the World Cup to demand some rather extraordinary privileges. Here are just some of the things the UK government was prepared to accept as part of its bid to host the 2018 World Cup:

The U.K. said it would meet FIFA’s requirements to create a 2-kilometer perimeter around stadiums, and said the right to conduct commercial activities there was subject to the approval of FIFA or its appointees. The government also agreed to suspend some labor laws that affected FIFA’s activities and to lift restrictions on the import and export of foreign currency.

FIFA is currently trying to assert similar rights in Brazil, where the 2014 World Cup will be held:

Fifa General Secretary Jerome Valcke said the right to sell beer must be enshrined in a World Cup law the Brazilian Congress is considering.

Alcoholic drinks are currently banned at Brazilian stadiums and the country's health minister has urged Congress to maintain the ban in the new law.

FIFA evidently believes that keeping its sponsors happy (Budweiser is a "big Fifa sponsor" according to the article quoted above) is much more important than local laws or people's health. Valke explains:

"Alcoholic drinks are part of the Fifa World Cup, so we're going to have them. Excuse me if I sound a bit arrogant but that's something we won't negotiate," he said.

"A bit arrogant"? Surely not...

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Filed Under: beer, brazil, fifa, rights, world cup
Companies: fifa

US Risks Not Getting FIFA World Cup... Because It Won't Give FIFA Special Copyright Powers

from the don't-cave-in dept

The US is bidding on hosting the 2022 World Cup, and the decision will be made in a few weeks. Soccer's governing body, FIFA, recently released its technical reports on all of the various bids, detailing things like the number of stadia available and what would need to be built should a country win, the availability of training grounds, hotel rooms, transportation and so on. The US scores very favorably on all of these accounts, but the bid has been labeled "medium risk" because

"the necessary government support has not been documented as neither the Government Guarantees, the Government Declaration nor the Government Legal Statement have been provided in compliance with FIFA's requirements for government documents."

Guess what that means? The US bid committee hasn't secured a commitment from the US government that it will give FIFA the right to act as its own copyright cops and takeover the legal system so it can do things like criminalize wearing orange clothes. As the full FIFA report (PDF) puts it: "However, as the required guarantees, undertakings and confirmations are not given as part of Government Guarantee No. 6 (Protection and Exploitation of Commercial Rights) and mere reference is made to existing general intellectual property laws in the USA, FIFA's rights protection programme cannot be ensured."

It's clear that FIFA expects carte blanche to set up its own special legal protection in any country that hosts the event; it gives the bid from Belgium and the Netherlands a black mark because it "contains no guarantees, undertakings or confirmations with legal effect beyond existing laws". It also slates a number of countries for having "existing regulations... which adversely affect the free and unrestricted exploitation of media rights". The report indicates that just three bids fully meet FIFA's desire to have the ability to enact its own copyright and media laws: the human-rights hotbeds of Qatar and Russia, and the joint bid from Spain and Portugal.

Filed Under: copyright, fifa, us, world cup

FIFA Threatens To Sue Brewery, Because Dutch World Cup Fans Wore Orange

from the you-can't-do-that dept

FIFA, the organization that runs the World Cup, is notoriously aggressive in defending not just its own intellectual property, but those of any sponsors, while going to extreme lengths to crack down on any non-sponsor getting any kind of publicity whatsoever without paying. It's not unlike the Olympics in that manner. Of course, that leads to some absolutely ridiculous situations, like the one many of you are sending in about FIFA ejecting 36 Dutch World Cup team supporters for the massive sin of all wearing the same orange dresses. Why? Because the women all bought the dresses from a Dutch brewery, named Bavaria, so FIFA claims it was a viral marketing stunt by the brewery to capitalize on its IP without paying. In fact, FIFA is now threatening to sue. I'd love to see that lawsuit, because it's difficult to think of any sane reason why this should break any law. As someone from the brewery noted:

"Fifa does not have the monopoly on orange and people have the freedom to wear what they want."

What if a bunch of fans all just decided to wear the same things to show support for their team?

Of course, the really amusing part of all of this is that, without ejecting those women, I would bet most people would have had no idea at all that the orange dresses represented this brewery. Now, however, it's all over the press. Nice work FIFA. You just helped promote the brewery.

Filed Under: ambush marketing, dresses, fifa, orange, viral marketing, world cup
Companies: bavaria, fifa