A common complaint of many FIFA 20 players is to blame the connection or the EA servers rather than their own ability at the game. Sometimes your opponent is just better than you, it's not some conspiracy to ensure that you lose.
But sometimes it actually can be connection issues that cause laggy games and even disconnected matches.
Why do these happen, how long do server outages last and how can you get a better connection to play FIFA 20?
Why do the FIFA 20 servers go down?
The FIFA 20 servers can go down for a number of reasons including scheduled maintenance as well as unexpected outages. When the servers are down, online features are unavailable including Online Seasons, database updates and FIFA Ultimate Team.
All sections of FIFA Ultimate Team (FUT) are affected by the servers going down, even Squad Battles and offline Friendly matches as FUT uses the servers to see and manage your squad.
On a rare occasion, the servers have been taken down by hackers using distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. These DDoS attacks put too much pressure on the servers and they are unable to cope with the excess load, causing downtime.
Connectivity issues are a separate issue to server maintenance and display a different error message in FIFA 20. This is the most common problem experienced by FIFA 20 gamers and results in disconnects during matches.
It is caused by an internet connection issue somewhere between your console and your opponent's console, and could be caused by your internet connection, their connection, or the connection with the EA servers.
How long are the FIFA 20 servers down for?
When the FIFA 20 servers are undergoing scheduled maintenance, EA Sports usually announces how long they will be down for on their social media accounts. Scheduled maintenance can last anywhere from half an hour up to three or four hours, but EA usually tries to conduct this work during overnight hours so that less players are inconvenienced.
Match creation is disabled half an hour before any scheduled maintenance to ensure that no in-progress games are affected by the maintenance.
DDoS attacks causing the server to go down can sometimes paralyse the server for hours as EA try to get the server back online and stop any further attacks from happening.
When this happens, EA usually provides updates on its social media channels apologising for the inconvenience and letting gamers know how the safety measures are progressing.
Why are the FIFA 20 servers slow?
There are a number of reasons why FIFA 20 may lag or even disconnect when you play online matches.
The servers may be struggling to keep up with the volume of players, which is more likely to happen during weekends when FUT Champions is running and caused a higher number of disconnected matches during the coronavirus pandemic when a lot more people were playing at home.
Laggy matches and input delay are caused by a connection issue between you and your opponent. After brief pauses, the game seems to speed up as the data is sent and received by each player.
This is known as speed-up lag in the FIFA community. Button delay or input delay is when you press a button but it takes longer than usual for the game to recognise the pass, shot or tackle.
These may often be caused by your own connection but there are solutions to try to speed up your connection. The most effective solution to lag in FIFA 20 is to ensure you are on a wired rather than a wireless connection by connecting your console to your router using an ethernet cable.
Other ways to improve up your console's connection are to use an IPv4 connection, assign a static IP address, open network ports, change to an open NAT type, or simply turn it off and back on again.
You can change your connection from IPv6 to IPv4 in your modem settings using your PC, while assigning a static IP address will require use of both your console and your PC and can be quite time consuming.
Opening network ports also requires you to log in to your modem, while changing NAT types is done directly in your console.