FIFA 20 Disconnects Can Be Fixed By Disabling Notifications, EA Says

Electronic Arts have discovered that players are having issues with FIFA 20 disconnects. Strangely, these issues are being caused by things outside of the game itself, namely notifications on your computer or alt-tabbing out of the game.


Published: September 25, 2019 11:15 AM /

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fifa 20 disconnects

Electronic Arts have discovered that players are having issues with FIFA 20 disconnects. Strangely, these issues are being caused by things outside of the game itself, namely notifications on your computer or alt-tabbing out of the game. As a result, they've offered up a somewhat straightforward fix for now: turn them off.

Why are the FIFA 20 Disconnects happening?

EA gives some vague details for the cause behind the FIFA 20 disconnects on a help page detailing the problem:

The disconnections happen when the game loses focus on the game and turns its attention to the notification. This is because there are certain limitations that could cause other issues in the game if it was able to switch focus mid-match.

What these "certain limitations" are isn't specified, but anything that causes you to lose focus on FIFA 20 could cause the game to disconnect mid-match. This means that pretty much anything on your computer that has a popup like that can throw a wrench in the works.

EA's Fix for the Disconnects

EA's solution for these disconnects is to simply disable any notifications that might pop up while you're playing a game. Which, if you're on a modern PC, could be about half a dozen programs, including Origin itself (nevermind Windows). It even recommends that you disable notifications for programs you wouldn't want to close like your anti-virus software. (More than a few antivirus solutions offer a "silent mode" or "gaming mode" that does precisely this to prevent you from being bugged in the middle of a game.)

Unfortunately, the issue isn't the notifications themselves but rather anything that takes focus away from the game. As such, you shouldn't alt-tab either, lest you risk a disconnect in FIFA 20.

We can't say for sure if EA has a fix in the works, but the same help page notes that FIFA 19 now has a Borderless Windowed mode which doesn't suffer from this problem. Here's hoping that a similar solution is coming for this year's edition.

What do you think of EA's fix for the FIFA 20 disconnects? Do you think they'll get a more permanent fix out in a reasonable timeframe? Let us know in the comments below!

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More Info About This Game
Learn more about EA Sports FIFA 20
Game Page EA Sports FIFA 20
Developer
EA Sports
Publisher
Electronic Arts
Release Date
September 27, 2019 (Calendar)
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