What’s the story?
A cheat has found its way into the FUT game in FIFA 17 and could potentially ruin FIFA 18 by letting every single player on the team have a 99 rating. It is called ‘99OVER’ and implies that even a card with a smaller rating can outplay a higher rated card.
The context
The 99OVR hack is only for the PC version of the game but that is already damaging the system badly enough, and there is a scare that it could make it’s way onto the console.The PC version has easy access to the game’s codes.
Heart of the matter
What it translated into real life looks like is that even the silver or bronze cards could beat a 94-rated Cristiano Ronaldo and the likes. And to make matters worse, it isn’t possible to tell if the cheat is being used until the game has moved forward too far.
Players reported difficulty on the FIFA forum with the same, with one observation stating that all the players they played with were in the range of 95-99. The cheat is rendering five million FUT-coin team no better than a 10K squad, which amongst the other damages brings up questions as to what else remains to be played on, in the game.
One player reportedly expressed disappointment stating that the point of playing the game with the cheat is futile. A lot of hard work goes into hunting good players to be on one’s team, and the 990VR dissolves the effort.
Finding the culprit and banning them wouldn’t be a good enough solution to stop spreading the cheat. The player is of the belief that along with disabling the cheat, those who’ve been using it also need to be identified and banned from the game. It does go against the ethics of the game to use the cheat, irrespective of whether it exists and therefore the users are as responsible as the person who seems to have hacked it into the system.
One player threw light on how it is no longer possible to take screenshots of the 99-rated players after a game any longer and therefore cannot be reported if found misleading. This makes it easy to be able to cheat on the PC version since there are lesser chances of being undetected, especially of one is boosting other stats like physical and keeping the pace stable.
What’s next?
While the matter has been reported to EA, they are making provisions for removing the cheat. They have now started registering users stats server side. According to Reddit users, a disconnect occurs often times when matched against an opponent and their team on the screen and there could be a possibility that the opponent is a cheater using 99OVR.
Author’s take
This isn’t the first time the FUT game has experienced a hack and the last time a cheat went around, it took a lot of effort to remove it and cost a lot of good players that stopped using the PC version altogether. While there is a strong possibility that the cheat may work its way around FIFA 18, hopefully, EA will come up with ways to stop it from circulating further and ensure fair play.
