Recently, Ukraine’s Security Service (SSU) shut down a so-called “cryptocurrency mining farm” that was stealing electricity directly from a nearby power plant. They seized dozens of CPUs, hundreds of graphics cards, and 3,800 PlayStation 4 Slim consoles, which were believed to be used for crypto mining. But something didn’t add up, since mining crypto on PS4 Slims isn’t really practical.
It turns out this “farm” was using the PS4 Slims for something else entirely: running bots to farm in-game currency in FIFA 21.
As images from the SSU show, the PS4 Slims at this farm had game discs inside them, which you wouldn’t need if you were mining Ethereum or Bitcoin. The game was FIFA 21, and the farm was used to earn in-game currency and/or acquire rare player cards. The operators could then sell these accounts for real money.
Like many sports games today, FIFA 21 features an Ultimate Team mode where players build their dream team using player cards obtained from loot boxes. These loot boxes can be bought with in-game currency or real money. The chance of pulling a truly powerful player is less than 1%, so players often spend a lot without getting a good card. Meanwhile, earning in-game currency through gameplay takes a ton of time because it involves repetitive tasks.
Bots automatically play for hours to farm the needed currency on these consoles, then the accounts are sold on online marketplaces. On these sites, you can find ads selling FIFA accounts with fully built teams. For example, on one such website (shown below), a user sells accounts for 1,500 UAH (with teams worth 1.3 billion in-game currency) and 2,500 UAH, roughly 50 to 100 USD.
Farming rare items is clearly the goal of these PS4 Slim systems, which are controlled by PCs and neural networks to make money in the game. They can then sell accounts loaded with in-game currency to players hoping to get lucky with loot boxes or resell rare players for a profit. Selling in-game currency alone isn’t hugely profitable, but scoring rare players is tough. Since they use free electricity, even this kind of operation can make financial sense for them.
Besides the PS4s and CPUs, the farm also had about 500 graphics cards. With 500 GPUs, the same farm could mine Ethereum. Alternatively, those GPUs could be used to control characters in other games to farm currency and loot boxes. It seems like a diverse operation, capable of both crypto mining and farming in-game items and currency.
Source: Tom’s Hardware
