EA Sports is attempting to bring a little peace and harmony to intense online battles by removing some rage-inducing goal celebrations from the forthcoming FIFA 21 release.
The company says it is hoping to curb toxicity in online matches so the notorious “shush” celebration, in which the scoring player wheels away holding a finger to their lips.
As Eurogamer points out in its report, this celebration, which is conducted by holding the right analogue stick to the right or left, can be used to waste time as it happens when the player is jogging around the pitch.
When enacted after a conceding a last minute winner, the celebration adds insult to injury and we’ve often placed curse on the household of the gamer in question.
Another celebrations to be nixed, according to Eurogamer, include the Dele Alli “A-OK” or “challenge” celebration which wasn’t that popular anyway. We’d imagine the Ronaldo “calm down” will also be absent from FIFA 21 on this logic, given EA says it is also planning on making more changes in this “in this area.”
Lead gameplay producer Sam Rivera said in a recent briefing: “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.
“The flow is shorter, which is to try to keep you playing most of the time instead of just waiting. All together the intention there is just to keep you playing instead of doing other things that may not be necessary in the game.”
An Inverse report has additional quotes from Rivera noting that other changes will help to speed up the flow of the online experience.
He added: “What really matters is we reduced the time that you have to celebrate,” Rivera says. “We removed the ‘walk-back’; so after you score a goal, there was a celebration, then a replay, then you saw the player move back to the kick-off spot.”
Elsewhere Rivera also revealed that this year’s title won’t include VAR, which we’re all massively, massively grateful for.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
