NHL 27's Face Scans Are a Disaster and the Internet Has Noticed

 

EA Sports has a famous slogan. It's been their calling card for three decades. On this one, the internet has a response ready.

It's not in the game.

NHL 27 became available to early access players late last week ahead of its full Friday release, and within hours, hockey fans had done what hockey fans do: they went straight to social media to share screenshots. Not of slick gameplay or improved mechanics. Of the faces. Specifically, of what happens when a billion-dollar company renders some of the most recognizable athletes in the sport and the results look like a fever dream.

William Nylander. Auston Matthews. John Tavares. Stars whose faces are plastered across billboards and television screens across North America, rendered in NHL 27 in ways that have sparked genuine concern about what EA's face scanning technology is actually doing.

To be fair, a handful of players came out reasonably intact. Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Quinn Hughes apparently made it through the process looking something close to human. They are the exceptions. For everyone else, the Reddit thread collecting the worst offenders became required viewing for anyone who needed a laugh on a Friday.

"None of these players are real. They can't hurt you," one user wrote in response to the growing collection of nightmare renders. Another pointed out that all the faces seemed to share one unsettling quality, eyes positioned far too close together, which prompted perhaps the best reply of the entire thread: "Except for Cole Caufield, whose eyes look like they can't run fast enough away from each other."

This is not a new problem for EA. Every annual NHL release brings a fresh round of face scan complaints, and every year the company moves on without much acknowledgment. The difference this time is the scale of the reaction and the profiles involved. When your Auston Matthews looks like a distant cousin of Auston Matthews, people notice. When your entire roster carries that same slightly-off uncanny valley energy, it becomes a moment.

EA has built an empire on sports simulation. The face scan problem is a small corner of that empire, but it's a visible one. Players notice what their favourite athletes look like in a game they spent $80 on. And when the gap between reality and the virtual version is wide enough to generate memes, the slogan starts to feel like the punchline.

NHL 27, EA Sports, Video Games, Toronto Maple Leafs, William Nylander, Auston Matthews, John Tavares, Sidney Crosby, Cole Caufield, Quinn Hughes, NHL Video Game, Face Scans, Gaming, Social Media, Reddit