We’re big fans of FIFA 17 here at JOE HQ.
Annoying penalty system aside, it’s a real game-changer for the franchise, offering up a glimpse at the future of football games.
Key to FIFA’s reinvention this year has been their new single player mode, dubbed “The Journey”. Asking you to control the career of a brand new football player, Alex Hunter, The Journey has been praised for its attempts at showing you the world of a professional footballer, both on and off the field.
Such a nice boy.
The Journey makes a real effort to make you feel like you are a the next big thing in football: it even gives you a Twitter account where friends (your mum) and foes (redacted for spoilers) can @ you with their thoughts.
It’s all good harmless fun.
Until EA accidentally used a real person’s Twitter details for the game.
In the game one of Alex Hunter’s fans is a person by the name of Calvin Wong, who sends him messages under the username @CalWong.
The only problem is there’s a real life @CalWong and he’s not very happy about his details being used.
.@EASPORTSFIFA Hey assholes, please don't use real twitter accounts in your dumb game, k thx pic.twitter.com/p5MRMcStU2
— Calvin Wong (@calwong) October 1, 2016
As reported in Kotaku, the real life Calvin Wong is rather ticked off about his twitter being used as a plot point in one of the highest selling games of the year.
“I work at Cartoon Network,” Wong told Kotaku in an e-mail, “and every time we make up a character in a show, we make sure that it’s cleared legally. A cursory search of my ID @CalWong brings me up instantly. The fact that nobody at EA [was] smart enough to do that is ridiculous.”
What should have been a harmless mistake from EA has escalated, as some unsavoury FIFA fans have begun to message Calvin some less than pleasant messages.
“I got harassed pretty harshly about it, with tons of racism,” Wong said.
“It’s as if I had a cute private house in my corner of the net and somebody thousands of miles away gave a bunch of soccer hooligans my address.”
According to a recent Kotaku update, have since responded and sent an e-mail clarifying that the inclusion of Wong’s name and Twitter handle was coincidental.
EA said they “apologize [sic] for any confusion this unintended coincidence has caused” and are “taking steps to remove this handle from the game and are committed to getting this resolved as soon as possible.”
What a palaver. Frankly, we blame Alex Hunter.
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