Have you ever played a match on FIFA 17 where nothing has gone your way?
Well, there may be more to it than just being unlucky.
Scripting refers to the notion that a line of game code changes the flow of a match if it becomes too one-sided.
So, if you’re winning 5-0, theorists claim the code recognises the imbalance and boosts the opposition’s ability whilst simultaneously hampering yours.
Hundreds of FIFA 17 players blame the alleged existence of this code for bizarre in-game behaviour – such as referees ignoring offside calls and keepers refusing to save easy shots.
However, Sam Rivera from EA Vancouver wants to finally set the record straight ahead of the FIFA 18 launch.
When asked if such a thing exists, he said: “No. We don’t really have a reason to out that in the game.”
He continued: “Our job is to is to understand the football concepts and put them in the game one by one and in detail. Let me give you an example.
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“You ask Ronaldo to take a shot and hit the left corner of the goal every time – he won’t be able to.
“There are many reasons that are going to prevent him from doing that.
“There could be pressure, the ball could be too close to you, it could be on your weak foot… there are many, many reasons so we try to understand those in detail and put them in the game.”
By doing that there’s already going to be dramatic emotional moments in the game because it happens in real life, and it should happen in FIFA.”
One of the most popular conspiracy theories is the ‘2-0 bug‘, which gamers claim causes you to lose a game if you have a 2-0 advantage.
Rivera was quick to shut this down.
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“There would be no reason for us to come up with something,” he told us at a FIFA 18 preview event in London.
“I have played many games where I am winning 2-0 and I end up winning 2-0.
“If the ball goes through the hand of a goalkeeper or something else, that will happen because of bugs – that happens all the time.
The problem is is that it happens by luck – in the moment the ball was crossing the goal line. It’s all a combination of things.”
“When you are really under pressure because it’s the last minute you are going to get nervous and that affects reaction time – so you won’t play as well.”
Rivera’s comments echo those FIFA producer Aaron McHardy, who in 2012 told FIFA Soccer blog scripting is “absolutely not” in gameplay.
He went to say: “Some racing games use this ‘rubber banding’ logic to keep races tight but it’s not something that we do.”
However, last year one curious player claimed to have found a ‘momentum’ code buried in the game’s files.
He pointed to the existence of a ‘team chemistry’ tab – and ‘used in momentum’ is written next to it.
“I am no programmer or anything, but out of curiosity I was looking through some of the Fifa 17 game files,” he wrote on Reddit.
“I found the following in the file “Initfs-Win32”: The file can be found on PC at Origin Games > Fifa 17 > Update > Patch > Data.”
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