Professional eSports are still a relatively new concept in the world at large, despite becoming a major industry rather quickly. However, there are still some oddities in eSports, including the ways to settle a match during server outages. EA, however, managed to find an unconventional way to solve that issue: rock, paper, scissors.
EA's servers went down the other day, causing issues for each of the company's games. However, that outage struck at a particularly unfortunate time for two professional FIFA players, Shaun Galea and Hasan Eker, who were unable to find each other for an EA-licensed match due to the outage. And while it may not be the best way to determine something like Team of the Year, EA used some quick thinking to determine who would be moving forward.
Unfortunately for Galea, it wasn't him. The player lost the rock, paper, scissors nail-biter, and by extension, the match. Galea took to Twitter to vent about the fiasco, expressing frustration that all of his hard work to that point had been for nothing, and had largely been thrown out the door because of EA's server issues.
All around, it's an incredibly odd situation. EA needed a quick solution, and a game of rock, paper, scissors makes a bit of sense, but it's still incredibly strange. The better option would have just been to push things back until the server issues were resolved, but that may have just caused worse delays for other matches. However, things did work out well for Eker, so it's a double-edged sword.
EA has faced criticism for its handling of the FIFA 20 professional scene, and the game in general. Recently, EA banned a FIFA YouTuber from all of its games and services. The YouTuber had been critical of EA, and FIFA 2o, though that criticism frequently crossed into abuse and harassment more than constructive criticism.
Hopefully, EA's servers will stay sorted and no other players will have to settle matches with rock, paper, scissors. It's unfortunate right now, and certainly odd, though given the situation it may have been the best option– even if that sounds strange for one of the best sports series out there.
FIFA 20 is available now for PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.
Source: VG247