Recently, we received information that the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) closed down “a cryptocurrency mining farm” that was stealing electricity directly from a nearby power plant and seized dozens of CPUs, hundreds of graphics cards, and 3,800 PlayStation 4 Slim consoles that were supposedly for “cryptocurrency mining”. However, something seemed off, as mining cryptocurrency on a PS4 Slim doesn’t seem like a good idea.
It turns out, this “farm” was using the PS4 Slims for another purpose: running bots to earn currency in FIFA 21.
As images from the SSU have shown, the PlayStation 4 Slims at this farm had game discs inside, something you wouldn’t need when mining Ethereum or Bitcoin. It turns out, the game was FIFA 21 and the farm was used to earn in-game money and/or acquire rare characters. The operators of the farm could then sell these accounts for cash.
Like many other sports games today, FIFA 21 features an Ultimate Team mode, which theoretically allows players to build their dream team using player cards obtained from loot boxes. Loot boxes can be purchased with in-game currency or real money. It’s worth noting that the chance of getting a truly powerful character is under 1%, so gamers may end up spending a fortune without landing a decent player. Meanwhile, earning in-game currency takes a lot of time as it requires many steps (performing repetitive tasks).
The bots play the necessary hours and earn the required currency on the gaming machines, after which the accounts are sold in online stores. In such stores, you can find advertisements selling FIFA accounts with available teams. For example, on one of these websites (see below), a user is selling various accounts for 1,500 UAH (with a team worth 1.3 billion in-game currency) and 2,500 UAH, approximately $50 to $100.
Farming rare items is clearly what these PlayStation 4 Slim systems, powered by PCs and neural networks, are aimed at to earn in-game money. They can then sell the accounts filled with in-game currency to those wanting to try their luck and earn a rare player by purchasing loot boxes or obtaining that rare character to resell at a higher price. Selling in-game currency might not be too profitable, but trying to get a rare character is quite difficult. Since they are using free electricity, even such an operation could make financial sense for them.
Not only PS4 and CPUs, but this farm is also estimated to have around 500 graphics cards. With 500 graphics cards, the same farm could also mine Ethereum. Meanwhile, these 500 graphics cards could also control characters in other games to train them, earn in-game currency, and/or loot boxes. It seems this is quite a diverse “grinding” operation, which could be used for both cryptocurrency mining as well as characters and currency in games.
Source: Tom’s Hardware