For tackling toxicity in FIFA games, Electronic Arts has decided to cut two goal celebrations—Shush and A-Ok—from the upcoming FIFA 21.
Celebrations are one of the major ways of annoying your opponent in FIFA. Your opponent is forced to watch them – and they can be pretty grating after rage-inducing goals are scored. The Shush celebration in particular is infamous within the community, as it is done while the scoring player is running. Players sometimes use running celebrations to extend the celebration time as they jog up and down the pitch – a frustrating time-wasting tactic according to Euro gamer.
The reason for the removal of A-Ok, which was only added last year, is less clear, but it’s built around the same “OK” gesture that Activision recently removed from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone because of its recent connection to white supremacy movements.
“We were told by the community that there’s toxic behaviors 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 for the game.” lead gameplay producer Sam Rivera said.
EA has made a reduction in the number of time players spend in kickoffs, throw-ins, goal kicks, and other specific events for FIFA 2021. The title will also auto-skip some animation sequences when the ball goes out of play in online matches. For example, when a player goes to fetch the ball for a throw-in, or when the keeper slowly walks to put the ball down for a goal kick. EA said that other changes are aimed at reducing toxicity in online FIFA matches which are also likely to happen.
