No more dolphin swimming or flying in Rematch—in a bug fix, Sloclap very seriously explains why levitating soccer players aren't part of its vision for the game

Sloclap has come to players, hat in hand, a grim expression on its face, and stated that—despite trying as hard as it could—it could not keep dolphin-flopping or levitating football players in its game. Alright, maybe I'm being overdramatic here—but I do find it funny that in the latest hotfix for Rematch, the studio's gone to great lengths to explain its reasoning behind patching up some very obvious exploits.

The first of these is "dolphin flopping". Basically, repeatedly spamming a dive while sprinting was, somehow, faster than simply sprinting in a straight line. I tested it myself, finding that diving in this way was indeed the most efficient strat.

"We are closely monitoring how the game and its meta are evolving day after day," Sloclap starts, "and we are seeing a lot of new mechanics and ways to play being discovered by our players. We think a lot of these are cool and interesting, but some others have a negative impact on the game."

I want to remind you that Sloclap is talking about schools of football players majestically leaping over the pitch like a swarm of flying fish, here: "It allows players to bypass the limitations of stamina and sprint speeds, and has a negative impact on the look and feel of the game."

The solution, as it stands, is a temporary one—diving now has a bigger recovery window: "This is a small enough adjustment but will have an impact on how the ability feels and functions even in legitimate circumstances, so we will be monitoring these effects closely."

The other thing Sloclap is being unnecessarily cautious around is the issue of flying—like, straight-up levitation. Players were able to achieve this by spamming volley lob taps against a wall, which would slowly see them ascend like the ghost of tekkers past. You can see a clip of someone doing it below.

Flying Glitch from r/Rematch

This is, obviously, a bug—and obviously something to fix. Sloclap's done so by reducing the ball's interactable frames. "This removes the aforementioned issue but will also have an impact on the rest of the game, specifically by making some solo backboard setups harder to execute." Sloclap, once more, promises to monitor it.

The studio finishes off this hotfix with an entire paragraph of justification and, like… buddy. I think we're all in agreement that stopping people from flopping around or levitating is basically fine. Here's the full quote for prosperity's sake:

"Rematch is a game with a lot of complex interactions between mechanics and even the smallest change can have a big impact on how the game is played. At the same time, we must be able to answer serious issues in gameplay in a timely manner. Our objective is to refine this balancing act between the pacing of fixes, and the stability of the game and its mechanics.

"We admire the way players have come up with new emergent mechanics and advanced techs, some of which add a healthy amount of depth to the game, but some of these unintended mechanics cause more harm than good, and we think they should be removed from the game. We will post a new devblog about these emergent mechanics and our intentions about how we, as developers, wish to deal with them."

I do kinda get why Sloclap's tentative here. The line between an exploit and, well, cool tech is very thin—and given the studio's fighting game/brawler DNA, I can see why it'd hesitate to simply bring down the hammer. Some of the best tech in fighting games—wavedashing, for example—comes from unintentional mechanics. I'm glad that Sloclap's cautious.

But maybe too cautious, yeah? I don't know if anyone's going to be genuinely upset over these hotfixes, after all, it's not like there's a referee present to blow their whistle whenever John Football decides its time to climb the side of the arena. The full patch notes end with a notice that stability issues have also been sorted.