Last year, a ton of Xbox 360 owners began complaining that they'd been "hacked", and because much of the money stolen ended up being spent on EA's FIFA 12, it was believed the game was somehow responsible.
It wasn't, of course. The truth, at least in some small part, was far more complicated than that.
While Microsoft seems to have closed the loopholes causing the upswing in account hijacks, other companies are looking at their security as well. One of those is EA, who is making some changes to FIFA's security for the upcoming FIFA 13.
"We learned a lot from the experience. A lot of companies are suffering from this right now. There's a lot of sophisticated hacking happening in the gaming industry and it's a continuous battle," EA Games president Frank Gibeau told Joystiq. "We take it very seriously, put a lot of resources on it. The learning from the FIFA example last year has been incorporated this year. There's some incremental and additional things. I don't want to get too detailed because I don't want to tip our hand. Rest assured, we take it very seriously."
As they should: EA made nearly $40 million in three months selling FIFA digital content over the holidays, 69% more than the same time last year. So, yeah, Microsoft's (and Xbox owners') loss was actually, in a perverse way, EA's gain.
Hence the changes. That was dirty money!
EA putting 'a lot of resources' toward preventing another 'FIFA hack' season [Joystiq]