Electronic Arts i.e. EA Sports has postponed the NHL 21 closed beta and delayed the announcement of more news about the game in a show of solidarity for athletes’ strikes after considering racial injustice. On the Twitter platform, EA has made an announcement regarding the postponed of the start of the closed beta. Earlier the launching date of NHL 21 was scheduled to begin on August 28. The company also committed that it will not release the new details on the World of Chel mode for NHL 21 today as per the earlier planning.
Here is the tweet of EA-“Out of respect for much more important conversations around social injustice, today is not the day. We stand with the African American / Black community in solidarity against racism,”.
EA has made this announcement after that of NHL which committed than all of Thursday’s Stanley Cup playoffs games have been postponed in solidarity with the protests considering the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
There seems to have a diversity problem in Hockey. More racist players and team names began to appear in NHL 20 in the month of June after the murder of George Floyd. EA has also announced that it would implement very harsh penalties for offensive content in response and will also try to strengthen its profanity filters and its online moderation. In the end, EA rolled out a new way to report offensive player and team names.
EA has confirmed that all the new updates related to the game will be shared soon along with the launch of its closed beta testing. NHL has made an announcement followed by EA’s has released its announcement related to Thursday’s Stanley Cup playoffs games were postponed in solidarity with the recent over the death of Jacob Blake. The price of Standard Edition of NHL 21 game is $59.99. The next deluxe will be available at the cost of $79.99.
The company has also donated USD $1million in support of the Black Lives Matter cause, alongside a number of other developers and publishers. The company has launched its Positive Play Charter initiative at the end of June which serves as a list of community guidelines against sexism, racism, homophobia, and other unacceptable behavior under its community. It was also said that the company has removed over 3,500 “player-generated assets” which is considered inappropriate and took strict actions with the players that had posted anything related to the content.
NHL 21 can be played easily on next-gen consoles because of its forward-compatibility, but it will not receive PS5 and Xbox Series X releases with next-gen exclusive features. This will definitely emphasize the game’s quality on initial release for current-gen consoles.
