EA Tweaks FIFA 21 to Reduce Toxicity

As of late, EA has been keeping their head down, only emerging to talk shop occasionally and make a social justice post, and it’s not really hard to see why. With increasing scrutiny on long-time rivals Ubisoft and more hatred for Microtransactions and loot boxes than ever before, it seems “no publicity is bad publicity” is being put to the test in recent weeks. Last we heard from them, they were publicly asking employees to come forward with any tales of abuse, so they could avoid becoming the next Ubisoft. Now, they’re continuing their part-time crusade against toxicity by making some small tweaks to FIFA 21, their upcoming soccer/football game.

Specifically, they’re removing two post-goal celebrations – “Shush” and “A-Ok”. The former’s removal is quite obvious – the “Ok” symbol has been coopted by white supremacists in recent years, and while the ability to troll with it is fairly limited, it’s better to be safe than sorry – you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone so evangelical for the “A-Ok” hand gesture that they’d raise a fuss about its removal. The second, “Shush”, was a lengthy little animation, and was abused by jerks in the community to waste everyone’s time. So EA is making the decision to remove that option.

EA is also shortening walking animations, and putting stricter time limits on how long players can stall at certain points in the game (like corner and penalty kicks), all in an effort to quell this kind of meaningless trolling. According to Sam Rivera, lead gameplay producer:

“We were told by the community that there’s toxic behaviours in the game and we wanted to make sure we removed them. So we removed some of the celebrations that people thought were not the best idea to have in the game.”

It’s a step, EA. I’ll take any kind of step I can get.