The hackers’ goal was to get Vice to throw mud at Electronic Arts. This led to some results…

In June, hackers have breached Electronic Arts’ data servers, and reportedly, they acquired the source code of both FIFA 21 and the shooter version of Frostbite Engine (something that will be used in Battlefield 2042). Enter Vice, who wrote about how the hackers wanted to extort the publisher. They didn’t get anything, so they began leaking the data they got.

„Few week ago we send email for ransome [sic] to EA but we dont get any response so we will posting the [source]. If they dont contact us or dont pay us we will keep posting it,” the hackers wrote in a message, and we did not improve its grammar whatsoever. Motherboard, Vice’s tech section, reported that it saw a copy of a 1.3 GB pack that the hackers released. It included references to Electronic Arts’ internal tools and Origin (which is Electronic Arts’s digital storefront). And yet, the publisher won’t pay anything (even though they can afford it due to their sports games’ gambling section, Ultimate Team, not to mention how FIFA 22 will STILL not get improved to the next-gen consoles’ and Google Stadia’s version on PC!)

„We’re aware of the recent posts by the alleged hackers and we are analyzing the files released. At this time, we continue to believe that it does not contain data that pose any concern to player privacy, and we have no reason to believe that there is any material risk to our games, our business or our players. We continue to work with federal law enforcement officials as part of this ongoing criminal investigation,” Electronic Arts wrote in a statement.

And now for the joke: a few weeks after the original extortion, the hackers contacted Motherboard! „The hackers asked Motherboard to directly deliver an extortion message to EA on their behalf. Motherboard declined to do so,” the site wrote.

Source: PCGamer