The investigation is ongoing, and EA has promised that any employee who is found to have made a sale of  EA FC 26 merchandise to gamers will be disciplined. The company with FUT 26 Coins has also announced that EA have stopped the practice of discretionary content giving, an internal practice that allows employees to legally gift game-related contents to EA accounts to test marketing, marketing, or to pay for issues with customer service.

The details of EA Gate was revealed after an Twitter user identified as of Arcade-Fut shared a series of images of a chat thread in which a client and an EA employee discussed the cost of buying  EA FC 26 Teams of the Year and ICONS cards, which are extremely appreciated due to their rarity.

According to one picture it appears that this practice has been in place for many years, and the message in Spanish indicated that it was an employee from EA Germany selling the cards with the help of two intermediaries, and was doing it for "at minimum three years I can recall." The employee needed only the purchaser's EA as well as PSN ID for the purchase to be completed.

Although an employee selling illegally  EA FC 26 Ultimate Team cards is undoubtedly a source of anger for many , it also is a matter that could be more troubling. FIFA cards and loot box have long been a subject of contention in the video game franchise, enough so that authorities have started investigation in several countries into the practice , and have questioned whether gambling is a factor.

In recent times there has been an increasing number of stories have been reported of players who have spent hundreds, to thousands of dollars for loot boxes, not only in EA games, but in other games as well. The fact that a lot of players think it's more affordable to spend between $1000 and $2600 to buy  EA FC 26 packs of cards under the table with this EA employee is a testament to their trust in the probability of being able to obtain these items legally.

The ongoing debate surrounding the issue of what FIFA fans call "EA Gate" continues to escalate. EA has denied allegations that official accounts were used to market exclusive, valuable FIFA Ultimate Team objects for hundreds of dollars. In the course of its investigation, EA has also made an immediate decision to stop the reward system for discretionary items for a period of time. It's unlikely to ease the angst in the FIFA community However, it's an important step in the right direction.

For those who aren't familiar about the concept of discretionary content granted to FIFA by EA The publisher has gave a brief overview. In essence, it's a means to allow EA to offer FIFA Ultimate Team contents to players automatically, bypassing the RNG components that are included in FIFA packs. The items are given to EA staff or its partners, and are not exchanged. EA states that they are only available for professional players of the football league, celebrities employees and partners, and certainly not given to "professional gaming influencers."

Additionally, EA says that discretionary items may be handed out by customer service representatives to players who have deleted items accidentally, or distributed through testing and quality-verification users through testing accounts whenever issues arise. Naturally, these situations have the strictest restrictions.

EA is evidently trying to dispel the idea that it's making use of this FIFA Ultimate Team products without restriction. It's not difficult to see the reason FIFA Ultimate Team players with cheap FIFA 26 Coins would be concerned that Youtubers as well as Twitch streamers they follow are manipulative and don't have the same system they do. They also worried that EA might manipulate their FIFA Ultimate Team marketplace through these items that are discretionary.