Ukraine warehouse packed with thousands of PS4s was actually a FIFA Ultimate Team bot farm

Last week the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) announced it had shut down what was reported as a cryptocurrency mining farm that contained an incredible 3800 game consoles. Images showed racks of PS4 Slims (some claimed the photos showed PS4 Pros) - either way not the ideal hardware for a cryptocurrency farm.

According to an investigation by Ukraine business newspaper Delo, sparked by scepticism of the official claim about the farm being primarily about mining cryptocurrency, as well as the fact game discs can be seen protruding from PS4s in one of the pictures, what we're looking at in the photos is a bot farm that got stuck into the Ultimate Team grind, with the goal of selling accounts loaded up with in-game currency on the black market.

Delo said the Security Service of Ukraine has so far refused to comment on the revelation, citing the secrecy of the investigation. But the suggestion is these PS4 Slims, all controlled by PCs running bots, farmed Ultimate Team for profit.

Ultimate Team is the perfect game for this kind of operation, given how it's structured. You can spend real-world money on loot boxes in the hope of obtaining high-value cards, but the odds of getting one of the best players is soul-destroyingly slim. Or, you can play the game for months on end in a bid to save up enough of the in-game currency to splash out on the auction house. Or, you can buy FUT coins on the black market (expect 40,000 FUT coins to cost you a couple of quid). To put that into context, Lionel Messi's 99-rated Summer Stars card currently costs around 1.5m FUT coins on the PlayStation auction house.

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