FIFA YouTubers robbed by online thieves

Six YouTube stars known for their hugely popular FIFA videos have been targeted by hackers.

AnesonGib, W2S, Nepenthez, Nick28T, Bateson87 and matthdgamer have a combined audience of more than five million YouTube subscribers and post guides, tips and more video each week, with each video often seeing hundreds of thousands of views.

The six creators were among a number of FIFA players to be compromised by cyber thieves, who proceeded to steal millions of the in-game FIFA coins –which can be purchased with real money – and erase costly footballers from their accounts.

Talking to the BBC, Matthew ‘matthdgamer’ Craig said that more than 10 accounts had been hacked over a period of two weeks.

He added that his own account was broken into, with star player Christiano Ronaldo deleted. The footballer was valued at a real-life cost of around 800.

It has been suggested that access to the Origin accounts belonging to those affected was unwittingly transferred to the hackers by EA, potentially by exploiting EA’s customer support and account recovery systems.

EA reportedly apologised to the players and restored their accounts to them, as well as increasing the level of security available.

A spokesperson for the publisher told the BBC: "We encourage all Fifa players to secure their accounts with authentication and verification steps, which we outline on our help and our product sites.

"We are consistently working through our customer experience teams to secure accounts and make sure players are educated when account compromises are made."