EA has joined the ranks of companies that failed to account for the leap year as their EA Sports WRC crashes when the date is set to February 29.
Upon launch today, many players found out that their game kept crashing and would refuse to launch no matter what. Users took to social media with their complaints, and EA provided a prompt response that they were looking into it.
EA provided the following solution:
"Guidance for PlayStation players:
- On your console, go to Settings > System > Date and Time > Set Date and Time > Set Manually.
- Change the date to March 1, 2024.
- Once this change has been done, the game should function normally."
A similar solution was also provided for Xbox players. However, instead of changing your console's entire calendar to accommodate EA's bug, we suggest you wait a day or set a reminder to revert it as soon as the date changes.
They didn't acknowledge it, but it's evident that the issue is caused by the game being unable to process the date of February 29. Despite the frustration faced by players, the fact that the crash was caused by such a basic oversight from such a large company is pretty funny.
Commenters and people in the quotes were having a field day making fun of EA for this mess up. It's a pretty embarrassing position to be in, but they're not alone. Theatrhythm Final Fantasy on the Nintendo Switch also suffered from this same issue today until fans decided to change the date there as well.
While we're all human, and not every game developer will account for one day that occurs every four years, it's astounding to see it from a company that operates on the scale of EA.
It's always funny to see this bug pop up for some game every four years, and we can all look forward to the next edition of the leap year bug in 2028.