Back in August, with the release of FIFA 15 growing closer, Electronic Arts promised to bring great vengeance and furious anger down upon those who dared to cheat in FIFA Ultimate Team. Now the publisher has gone one step further in its efforts to clamp down on bad behavior by eliminating trade offers from the game entirely.
EA acknowledged in a message posted yesterday on the FIFA Ultimate Team forums that some players use the trade offer feature to conduct legitimate trades, but said it's also commonly used by coin sellers to sell and move coins. Account phishers make similar use of trade offers to clean out stolen accounts, and while the practice of "bid bumping," used to force players into over-bidding for items, is probably more annoying than actually in violation of any specific rule, the elimination of trade offers will end that practice, too.
"It was a tough decision, but this is the right step towards improving security, showing cheaters the red card, and keeping FUT safe for all FIFA fans," EA wrote.
To further secure FIFA Ultimate Team accounts, Origin Login Verification prior to accessing the Ultimate Team web app will be made mandatory in the near future. Details on how to set that up are available from the EA help site . FIFA 15 comes out on September 23, but if you want to get a feel for what's cooking ahead of time, you can grab the demo now .
