Guide for Buying Coins on FIFA 15 Ultimate Team

This being quite a suggestive title you’ve probably already given us disapproval. Try not anticipating, carry on reading. Before anything else, it’s important to mention that we have no interest on promoting coin sellers or encouraging you to buy coins. Our main objective here is to warn you about the dangers of coin negotiations. For people that already do this, we want to at least give instructions so that future problems are avoided. We know that this article might turn out to be a bit polemical, however this shouldn’t be a reason not to explore the theme. Welcome to our guide for buying coins on FIFA 15 Ultimate Team.

 
 
 
 
Quick Access

Intro
Terms of Service
Why you can’t Buy
The Truth
Consequences of Buying and Selling
How to Buy
The Cares you Should Take
Prices
News
FAQ

Introduction

Ultimate Team is a FIFA game mode where you’re invited to build your dream team. You can sell what you don’t need and buy what you want, but for that you’ll need “money”. And by “money” we mean coins. They are your club’s most precious property because that’s how you buy everything, you use coins. Actually, almost everything. Coins don’t buy wins, but they do make them come easier.

As you would imagine, everyone is after these coins to make their dreams come true. The more the better. There are several ways to get coins, one is to win tournaments/seasons to get prizes and there’s also trading. However, none of these are as quick and efficient as buying coins directly. There will always be someone willing to monetize their playing time.

Now, it’s important that you know that according to the game’s terms of service this is not allowed. You may do this knowing that there’s a chance you’ll be punished. And by punishment, it means you’ll lose everything you’ve accomplished in your club or even get banned from EA Sports FIFA. If you understand the risks and still want to go on, then it’s important that you know what you’re doing. The thing is not only there are people selling coins for real money, but there are also those willing to trick you.

In this article we’ll explain the risks of buying coins, analyse EA’s politics about this theme and give you all that you need in order to buy cheap coins safely.

Terms of Service

There are a lot of people out there taking risks because they simply lack the knowledge. Our mission here is to give you that knowledge. If you still have no clue at this point, here it is: buying (and selling) coins on FIFA 15 Ultimate Team is not allowed. Settled. This article could simply stop right here but we want to go deeper and clear a few things out.

When buying coins you’re not breaking any laws in your country, so there’s no way you’ll be pressed charges. However, you’ll be acting against the game’s terms of service and you can’t use unawareness as justification. You probably don’t remember but you had to accept these terms in order to play the game. Exactly, that was the first time you played FIFA 15 and you were so excited at the time that you just skipped it. You gave them your word, though.

Buying coins is against the game’s terms of service

You don’t remember reading that? Not surprising. More than 99% of the players never really read those lines. It’s a large and boring document, so don’t blame yourself. If you want to go back to EA Terms of Service, go to the last menu of the game in your console, or click here.

We put the Terms of Service one click away from you and you still haven’t read it, right? We understand. We made sure to read it ourselves and some things got us a bit surprised. Firstly, the buying and selling coins prohibition isn’t as obvious as EA wants it to look like.

Publicly the company claims “the sale of players and coins by anyone not authorized by EA, and the purchase of players and coins from a source other than EA or without EA’s consent, is a violation of EA’s Terms of Service“.

The same company acts like all this is included in there: “Buy, sell, transfer or auction (or host or facilitate the ability to allow others to buy, sell or auction), or offer to transfer, sell or auction, or buy or accept any offer to transfer, sell or auction, any game Account or game Content, including (without limitation) game characters, character attributes, items, objects, currency, credits or copyrighted material, or any other intellectual property owned or controlled by the Services, or our licensors, without first obtaining our express written permission, nor may you encourage or induce any other player to participate in such prohibited transaction(s)“. But no. None of that is mentioned in the terms of service. The closest to that that you might find is located on the rules of conduct (artº 11), which lists the things you’re not allowed to do and it includes: “Promote, encourage or take part in any activity involving hacking, cracking, phishing, taking advantage of exploits or cheats and/or distribution of counterfeit software and/or virtual currency/items“. On practice it’s not exactly the same, maybe because this document was last updated on 2012 and now it’s a different reality. For whoever wants to explore this, this is our cue, you have a place to start although have in mind that EA are well protected. We don’t have any interest on this because we’re not against them banning coin negotiations, after all.

Why Can’t I Buy Coins?

If you’re asking yourself this it’s probably because you skipped the last chapter, or maybe you haven’t understood. You just can’t because it’s against the game’s terms of service. Actually: you can, you just shouldn’t. But if you need one more reason not to buy coins, we’ll give you that: once you do that, you’re detracting the game’s fairness. You’re having advantages over the other players in an artificial way. It’s more of a matter of moral, really. It’s cheating. It’s wrong.

In a fair game, all the participants should have the same opportunities of winning and play on the same conditions. Paying for an advantage is wrong. That shouldn’t happen. Buying coins allows that to happen. Or is it not really like that?

The Truth About Coin Selling

Although it’s got really popular only just now, we’ve been watching this carefully for the last 5 years. It’s funny seeing how the community’s mentality changes and how it’s so easily influenced.

Back when coin negotiations started, they weren’t seen with good eyes because that allowed people who spent money to build their dream team. However, little by little more and more people started doing this at a point where it got normal. Nowadays there are a few thousands of coin sellers out there. Most are no more than people trying to gather some quids, but there are also more organized and structured companies doing real business out of big amounts of coins. There are even those claiming they sell almost a billion (!) of coins a day. That’s just absurd!

Then, after this came to EA’s knowledge they decided it was time to do something about it. In the past they’ve actually done a few intimidation attempts, but nothing as big as now. Now it’s hunting season, this is what they say:
“Some players choose to take advantage on FUT by buying coins. These actions affect all players directly, an unfair advantage is created and the game’s economics are destabilized.”

However, the argument they used the most in order to influence the community was actually telling them what they wanna hear. According to EA, if coin sellers were banned, the FUT market would stabilize allowing prices to fall severally. This way we all would be able to buy Ibrahimovic or even Messi. Sounds good, right? Maybe it wasn’t exactly like this, but that’s the idea passed subliminally. This campaign got so strong that the community actually believed it was all true. From one day to another all the coin sellers started being hated. It’s their fault that the market is distorted. Now try to forget all about these anticipated ideas for a bit and think straight with yourself, would this actually happen? If suddenly buying coins weren’t possible do you really think the market would change at all? If you’re an experienced and alert player after all, right off the bat you’d know not much would change. The most expensive players would have their price lowered just for a bit but all the others would stay the same. People who used to buy coins would now buy packs and it would all stay the same. The market might be out of balance but the coin sellers aren’t the big responsible for that. That’s on all of us, but especially on those softwares called Auto Buyers that keep ruining opportunities, those players that keep being tricked into giving their account information to third parties, and mainly EA, who just don’t fulfill their duty of adjusting the market.

If you’re not naïve at all you’ve probably realised EA’s only true interest is to increase their budget no matter what. If buying coins wasn’t possible, a big part of this money would go straight to their pockets through pack openings. The rest is just consequence. Developing the game’s fairness and security is surely not a priority for a company that, year by year, increases their income but still doesn’t invest on servers. EA blames the bots, programs that buy and sell automatically on the market, for server problems. They claim these programs quadruplicate traffic and their servers are only prepared for an experience with people. It may sound incredible but EA’s campaign on this got so strong that several people were convinced by these arguments. If you’re not new you should already know about server problems being as old as the game itself. Back then when autobuyers didn’t even exist. After all, what should be the reason, other than poor infrastructure, why even within the Beta version servers were down? EA keeps revolving around something that is partially true whilst using it too much as an excuse. It’s unacceptable, for example, that we had the Web App down through almost all of FUT 14, and still we keep having the same bugs (catalogue coin boosts, header goals etc) simply because they never care to invest significantly more on the game.

Buying packs with FIFA Points is like buying coins at an unknown price which fully depends on your luck

Once again we remind you that we’re not defending the coin sellers. We just want things to be clear so that the community truly understands all that revolves around the problem. We do consider abusive, for example, the fact that EA refers to coin sellers as people who earned them illegally. This isn’t what happens many times. It’s just one of the ways EA thought they would get the community’s trust with, in a fight where they are the ones who will end up winning mostly.

But our concern here is mostly about the people who buy. We don’t think it’s fair that a person who buys coins is considered an offender. It’s true that it apparently goes against EA’s terms of service, but we’re talking about a company that constantly mistreats their costumers and for that has already been nominated the worst company in the USA, by the way. At this moment you’re probably thinking “so isn’t buying coins in order to build a good squad unfair over the people who don’t?”. Yes, of course it is. But what if it was possible to buy coins from EA? Wouldn’t that be equally unfair? Because that’s possible. You just need to buy packs and sell what comes inside. According to our calculations here, you get an average return of 100k coins per 31 euros spent buying packs with FIFA Points. In this game, people with money can build whatever squad they want. Either they buy coins or FIFA Points. How can EA condemn you for buying coins while they sell those themselves but at a much higher price? At least the coin sellers don’t camouflage their strategy and sell coins directly, something similar to what Konami does in their new “Ultimate Team”. We’ll go a little further: What’s wrong with even ourselves selling the coins we earned to someone? Why can’t we do giveaways with our coins? If we don’t need our coins from FUT 14 why can’t we just give them to someone who will stay in the game? There’s nothing in those actions that might harm the community’s playing experience. Once again, we do realise this is also a way of avoiding people from being tricked when buying coins but nothing disguises the mercantilist nature of these actions

You may have a different opinion than the one we here presented but we ask that you at least analyse these facts in the most independent way possible. We know that most of the experienced Ultimate Team players share this vision.

Consequences of Buying and Selling Coins

Buying and selling coins isn’t allowed by Electronic Arts and for that they created a penalty code in order to discourage potential buyers and sellers. When buying coins you’re apparently breaking the rules, therefore you should first get to know about the risks concerning your actions.

Let us start by the sellers. Those identified as people willing to give their coins away will be permanently banned from all EA games. That’s a tough punishment but on practice we doubt its efficiency. People who earn money with that will easily create more than one account. In the worst scenario he would lose everything and, let’s face it, that isn’t going to make most sellers give up. The same punishment goes for users caught using softwares like Autobuyers. Once again, it turns out inefficient because people who sell these programs allow in these cases the use of a free license on another account. The truth is EA’s weapons aren’t many and they do what they can. They’ll hardly be able to shut websites, now what’s left for them is expulsion.

If you insist on buying coins you might get banned from the game

The penalty for people who buy coins is a bit gentler, after all losing potential FIFA Point buyers isn’t part of EA’s interests.

Knowing that some of the people who buy coins aren’t really aware of these rules (which we hope turn to be less after this article!), EA will give them a warning before. They’re given a second chance to stop. They’ll receive a message on their EA Sports Football Club News feed on the game itself, plus an e-mail to their respective Origin account, such as this one:

We are contacting you to notify you that we have found your FIFA Ultimate Team account to be in violation of our Terms of Service.
Your account has been found to have been involved in purchasing FIFA Coins from a third party service. Purchases of FIFA Coins from these services are strictly forbidden. Only the purchase of FIFA Points is allowed. Coins can only be earned through playing Ultimate Team and trading on the Auction House, never by spending real currency.
You can read more about the effects and EA’s policy regarding coin buying here:https://help.ea.com/en/article/fighting-cheaters-in-fifa-how-you-can-stay-safe/
Please note that you may violate the Terms of Service if, as determined by EA in its sole discretion, you:
Buy, sell, transfer or auction (or host or facilitate the ability to allow others to buy, sell or auction), or offer to transfer, sell or auction, or buy or accept any offer to transfer, sell or auction, any game Account or game Content, including (without limitation) game characters, character attributes, items, objects, currency, credits or copyrighted material, or any other intellectual property owned or controlled by the Services, or our licensors, without first obtaining our express written permission, nor may you encourage or induce any other player to participate in such prohibited transaction(s).
As a result of this, we are issuing you with a formal warning related to this infraction. This is a one-time goodwill gesture which we will not repeat. Please note that for any future violation you will be dealt with harshly.
We are taking this action as buying Coins damages the experience for you and other players. By purchasing Coins, you encourage Coin sellers to cheat in matches and compromise other players’ accounts to generate Coins. Using such a service also puts the security of your own account at risk.
Our penalty system is cumulative. This means that if you continue to violate our Terms of Service, the penalty applied will increase in severity and may ultimately result in permanent account closure.
Should you wish to review our Terms of Service they can be found here: https://tos.ea.com/legalapp/WEBTERMS/US/en/PC/
If you feel you have received this warning in error, please contact us at [email protected]
Thank you for your understanding in this matter.
Yours sincerely,
EA Terms of Service
 

All the negative effects are given someone to blame. EA doesn’t take any responsibility.

Whoever is identified buying coins for the second time will take the chance of having their club and FIFA Points reset. You’ll basically lose everything, including your coins and players, naturally. However, you can start over and play again normally. The announcement is usually made by e-mail 72 hours after the punishment is applied.

If you insist on buying coins you’ll be banned. Forever. Unless you create another account, of course.

It doesn’t mean necessarily that you’ll be punished for buying coins. This may or may not happen.

One thing is a prediction, now it’s never guaranteed that it’s actually going to happen. The rules exist but they’re not applied to everyone, by the way. Although EA have been working on sending a message about them being severe against the Youtubers, the truth is that hasn’t changed much. Some of the most famous ones keep their coin seller sponsorship going, that making EA think twice before inviting them to their media events.

For regular players such as you and I, the punishment has been effectively going on. But not on the scale the company claims to be. Their intention is to intimidate potential offenders by saying “hundreds of thousands” have already been punished, but we definitely don’t think that’s true. It just doesn’t match our perception and the feedback we’ve been receiving from the community. After all it’s not easy for EA to identify who effectively once violated their terms of service. The best evidence on this is the fact that thousands of players have been unfairly punished for something they didn’t do, while some actual “offenders” haven’t even received a warning. If you believe you were wrongfully banned, you can dispute your ban from your registered email to [email protected].

If you’re thinking of buying coins, you need to know if it’s safe first. The thing is you don’t. There will always be some risk. It’s good that you’re aware you might get punished by EA. The feedback we get from sellers is that it’s very rare for this to happen, but we do know about some cases. The chances of you getting caught are low, but they’re real. Don’t think that if you buy less coins or if you do it little by little it’ll become safer. It’s the same. Also don’t believe in sellers that claim they have an “anti-ban” system. That’s pure marketing. You’ll be potentially punished the same way. There are no ways of tricking the system. It’s this simple: if you buy coins you have small chances of being punished some time.

How to Buy Coins

Being in this part of the article you should’ve already read all about the risks. Know that you’ll be violating the terms of service and so have some advantage over the players who don’t buy coins or FIFA Points. Since you’re about to do something this questionable make sure you do it right. This is where we help you. There will be those disapproving this, but we’d rather have someone buy coins properly than see others win money dishonestly.

The coin buying process is easy and simple. In general, sellers will ask you to do a procedure similar to this:

1) Open the Web App and log in to your account;
2) Click ‘My Club’ – ‘Players’ and search for a player (normally bronze) that you’ll hardly need and that’s not an untradeable;
3) Click ’List on Transfer Market’;
4) A new window will appear and you’ll need to define a Buy Now price equal to the amount of coins you’re buying, plus a start price preferably close to it with a 3 days duration;
5) Press ‘OK’ and go to the coin seller’s website where you should select your platform and let them know the amount of coins you want;
6) Enter your club’s name, which is the one shown right next to the FUT 15 logo on the web app, and give them the rest of the information requested, which varies according to the seller but almost always includes the name of the player you’re auctioning.
7) Perform the payment in one of the available methods. Normally sellers accept several types of payment, including credit cards and PayPal.
8) Your coins will be delivered to your account within a 24 hours period after the payment, yet sometimes the transfer is made in just a few minutes.

The Cares You Should Take

You should pay close attention to the following tips in order for everything to go down smoothly:

• Don’t buy from strangers

Pick your seller carefully. Avoid buying from strangers.

In this subject we completely agree with EA: buying coins is dangerous. Very dangerous. There are thousands of malicious people out there taking the opportunity to do phishing and others that steal the buyer’s money since he’s paying before receiving the coins. Remember that the game has nothing to do with the transaction that you’re about to make, so if anything goes wrong you don’t have anyone to complain to. Follow the safety recommendations and never, ever, give your account information to anyone.
It’s very easy to find people who sell coins. Just google it. But finding someone honest is a bit more difficult. We advise you to buy from someone who’s done it before and has positive feedback. Don’t just buy from anyone. Besides, avoid falling for the temptation of buying cheap. If you’ve found a price that’s way lower than the average (see on the next chapter) then you’re under serious risk of losing everything.

• Make the Transaction Safely


Every online sale offers risks. If the seller is unknown and his product is fictitious, these risks are even bigger. If you don’t have the payment method that you’re comfortable with available, ask the seller to make it so or else you’re going to another website. Follow the habitual safety recommendations: avoid using a credit card, use MBNet or PayPal when possible, make sure the seller is trustworthy, don’t give away personal information, etc…

• Have in mind how many coins you want


Before buying anything, you should already know what you really want. If you buy too many coins, you’ll be spending money for nothing. If you don’t buy enough, it’s most certain that you’ll have to buy again, but then, without the discount you normally get for bigger amounts of coins. Decide if you want to buy all at once, you can also leave some for later. After all prices tend to get lower and, with time, you’ll be able to get better deals.

• See who covers the 5%


All transactions in the FUT 15 auction house are subjected to a 5% tax because of EA. That means if you sell a card, out of the value you supposedly sold it for 5% will be discounted. Many sellers offer to cover this value in order for you to receive effectively the amount of coins you paid for. It’s important that you’re aware of this so you don’t run into a surprise once you receive the coins.

• Buy at fair price


When choosing a seller, safety isn’t the only factor you should be paying attention to. The price is always a decisive factor. Try buying at the lowest price possible, don’t skip potential discounts, it doesn’t matter if that’s through promotional codes or big amount discounts. Take a look at the following chapter if you want to know about the usual prices. Remember that the price goes side by side with devaluation of the coin, for it varies according to period of the season and platform. PC coins cost 1/3 of console coins and those on Android and iOS are not even close to that.

Coin Prices

Wouldn’t that be fantastic if you knew how much FIFA 15 Ultimate Team coins cost on average? That’s why we’ve been monitoring prices in a dozen different websites for more than a year. It’s time to jump to our conclusions.

From the beginning of the game until its very end, coins tend to get cheaper. This tendency is slightly affected in the late May because that’s when the first Team of the Season comes out. In the late September, when the game is released, there are few coin sellers with a stock, hence the tremendous prices. On the next month you’ll already be able to see a significant fall, the price stays at around 10 euros per 100k coins until it’s Christmas. Given 9 months, when the new FIFA is about to be released, the coins will hit their historic minimum price, it’ll be far from what you’ve seen all year.

This estimated average was made using FUT 14 as basis. Compared to last year, prices now are a bit lower. Now, comparing to FUT 13 and previous games, although these averages aren’t very different to each other, there’s been a higher amplitude along the current year.

As you can see, prices vary according to platform. Playstation coins cost about 15% less than Xbox ones, while PC prices are closer to hit one third of Microsoft’s. Since the cards’ prices inflate on the mobile market, coins for Android and iOS are way cheaper. It’s important that people are aware of the possibilities of coin usage. Since the consoles of same platforms share the same market, prices are equal for Playstation 3 and Playstation 4, and the same happens between Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

On our research, the lowest selling prices were practised by ‘particular’ players and not by one of the several coin-selling websites there are. However, in these cases the risks raise dramatically. We advise you not to buy from one person unless you really trust them.

The same way you buy coins somewhere, you can also sell them. Obviously you’ll have to sell cheaper because most coin-selling websites use profit margins of up to 60%. If you want to know how much you might be able to earn, multiply the website’s price by 0,4. Not much, right? Also, be warned that most people won’t buy in amounts less than 500k coins.

New Stuff

If you’re not new to Ultimate Team, most of what we write here is already known by you. Because of this, we created a simple chapter where you can consult a brief history of alterations concerning coin negotiations.

FUT 14 >> FUT 15

• Coins are slightly cheaper
• FIFA World coins are now being sold as well
• More severe politics against the coin sellers

Frequently Asked Questions about Coin Buying/Selling

Q: Should I buy coins?
A: The decision is for you to make. All the risks were explained over this article. It’s up to you to decide if you’re willing to take the chances or not.

Q: What kind of punishment shall I get for buying coins?
A: At first you’ll only receive a warning. If you insist, your account and FIFA Points will be reset. In the worst scenario you’ll be banned from all FIFA games.

Q: Are there many people being punished or banned?
A: Some players are being punished, but most are able to stay unharmed. Ban cases are very few.

Q: By buying coins am I cheating?
A: It depends on each one’s susceptibility and interpretation. In our opinion no, because it’s the same when you buy packs with FIFA Points, you’ll be given an advantage for using money. However, we do respect different opinions.

Q: How is the buying and selling of coins made?
A: Basically, you find the seller, transfer the money and wait for your card to be bought in the auction house for the Buy Now Price according to the amount of coins you paid for.

Q: How much do Ultimate Team coins cost?
A: The price varies according to the FUT, the seller, the platform, the amount of coins and the time of the year.

 
 
 
 
NOTE

We want to thank to for helping us to FIFA UT Coins Store for helping us to collect the coins prices to this guide.