With the massive development of e-sports, a new trend has come up in the gaming world as pro gamers and investors are building facilities that aim to farm game accounts which they sell to other gamers for thousands of dollars.
These pro gamers and investors are working on building small-scale to large-scale game accounts farming facilities that look like the crypto mining farms. The gaming farms can create multiple accounts for particularly high demand games like FIFA, and Call of Duty, etc, then they play the game to earn valuable coins, tokens, and achievements, then they sell the accounts to gamers who would like to have game accounts that have had some kind of progress.
The question is how do these people set up these game farms? Are they using bots to build and farm thousands of accounts? In this article, we are going to analyze how this grey business is done.
In July 2021, a report from Ukraine came out saying that the Ukrainian authorities busted a massive illegal Sony PlayStation 4 farm for what they had initially assumed to be a crypto mining operation. The warehouse turned out to be actually a farming facility for FIFA Ultimate Team accounts, coins, and cards. The facility was found to be in possession of 3 800 PS4 consoles, 500 video cards, phones, flash drives, and other computer equipment.
According to the Ukrainian journal Delo, which carried out an investigation itself following the initial findings by the authorities, the 3,800 PS4s discovered weren’t actually being used to mine cryptocurrency but to farm FIFA accounts, as the FIFA 21 game disks can be seen in the images.
More investigations on this case are still being carried out but we are going to spot out and analyze a couple of possible things that could be going on inside this farm.
Creating the Accounts
The farm owners set up a whole facility with 3 800 PS4 consoles that we believe somehow were interconnected and linked back to one main PS4 console. Every action that is carried out on the main console would be replicated or duplicated onto the rest of the consoles.
So taking that each console was running a FIFA 21 disk, the farm would be able to create 3 800 accounts at once.
Farming the Accounts and Coins
With the action being conducted in the main console, the FUT accounts can be run and grown to collect coins either manually or automatically. The farm owners could either have a pro gamer taking charge of farming the FUT accounts, playing to earn coins or they could be using a bot as most of the news reports say. Fifa’s FUT model is vulnerable to bots that can be used to automate some in-game actions. Many FUT sniping bots are being sold online and some are free and open-source on Github.
So we believe that in a large facility like this, sniping bots are used to farm and grow the accounts on auto-pilot until when they are ready for sale.
Selling the Accounts and In-game Coins
Buying and selling PlayStation game accounts and coins isn’t new on the internet especially when it comes to a game like FIFA. Even KSI, a popular Youtuber, and UK rapper admitted that he made millions and even bought his first Lamborghini by selling FIFA coins — check out the video here. Many gamers are always interested to be a step ahead of others so they always try to buy accounts that have bigger squads and more game coins so that they can tear down the online FUT competitions easily.
Selling FUT accounts has been so regular these days to the extent that the accounts are being traded on sites like eBay.
FUT coins are another valuable asset to possess. They can be traded from account to account without even selling the accounts. FUT coins have a real-life monetary value and sometimes are considered to be almost like cryptocurrency coins. Their prices fluctuate according to the console type and game release year.
According to PlayerAuctions, a website that deals with the trading of game assets and coins, the average price of 300 000 FIFA 22 FUT coins as of November 2021 is $26.
Other marketplaces like eBay have average prices of $11 per 100 000 FIFA 22 FUT coins.
Our Verdict
From this case of the Ukrainian farm, we believe that having such a large facility that has 3 800 consoles and incorporates the use of bots to farm accounts easily generates hundreds of thousands of dollars per year or more. The market demand for these coins and the development of gaming and esports seem to make this model they are undertaking to be more feasible over the coming years.
What About Other Popular Games Like Call of Duty
People have already begun making money by creating and selling accounts of Call of Duty: Vanguard which was released on 5th November 2021. Within just a few weeks from the game’s release, these pro-gamers are already creating accounts with improved characteristics, weapon skins.
A TikTok user under the nickname CodBotServices has posted several videos about his farm which creates and grows Call of Duty: Vanguard accounts. In the video posted on Tiktok, you can see several screens and more than 25 controllers that are running COD Vanguard accounts.
Earlier this year, Vice reported that Call of Duty accounts containing in-game items such as the Damascus skin can be sold for $2 000.
The gray business of selling hacked Call of Duty accounts flourished online in 2021. Activisation, the company that produces COD games has increased security measures, however enterprising people had to look for other methods of earning money like using bots to farm accounts.
Conclusion
Creating, farming, and selling PlayStation game accounts has the potential to be a very strong business model. This actually doesn’t apply to PlayStation games only but all other popular gaming and esports platforms.
Some gamers and investors have already jumped into this business but as long as the esports trends keep going up and other factors remain constant, this business model shall be able to generate millions of dollars for the people undertaking it.
