Hello EA team,

I would like to report what appears to be a regional game data center selection / routing issue affecting EA SPORTS FC 27 players in Moscow and potentially other parts of Western Russia.

The issue originally appeared in FC 26 around late July / early August, around the same period as the July 29 server maintenance discussed in other Eastern European latency reports. It has continued unchanged after the release of FC 27.

Before this change, my typical latency was approximately 20-25 ms. Since then, it has almost doubled and is normally around 42-44 ms.

I have now done several controlled tests and was able to reproduce a very significant difference depending on the routing and IP location.

Setup:

• Platform: PlayStation 5
• Location: Moscow, Russia
• Connection: wired Ethernet
• Current ISP: MTS GPON
• I have also tested different networking equipment and another ISP without resolving the issue.
• PS5 local IP during testing: 192.168.50.3

NORMAL CONNECTION - RUSSIAN IP

With no VPN or alternative routing:

• FC 27 ping: consistently around 42-44 ms
• Game UDP connection observed during the match:
  35.207.191.236:21037
• This IP belongs to Google infrastructure and appears to correspond to the Frankfurt region.

So under a normal Russian connection, FC appears to be selecting a Frankfurt game data center.

POLAND ROUTING TEST

I then routed only the PS5 connection through a Polish VPN exit.

The result was immediately and consistently different:

• FC 27 ping: 23-25 ms
• Stable across multiple matches
• Game UDP endpoint:
  34.0.253.20:21007
• This Google IP range corresponds to Warsaw.

This is nearly a 50% reduction in latency simply by changing the route / apparent source location.

Additional tests:

• Direct Russian connection: 42-44 ms
• Finland VPN: approximately 42-46 ms
• Germany VPN: approximately 46-54 ms
• Poland VPN: consistently 23-25 ms

This does not look like a problem with my home network, console, Ethernet connection or router.

More importantly, FC itself is selecting a different game data center depending on the route/source IP:

Russian IP -> Frankfurt -> approximately 43 ms

Polish IP -> Warsaw -> approximately 24 ms

I also tested the direct network route from Moscow to the Warsaw game endpoint.

The route was approximately:

Moscow -> St Petersburg -> Helsinki -> Tallinn -> Riga -> Warsaw

Representative traceroute:

1 192.168.1.1 ~1 ms
2 100.110.0.1 ~4-7 ms
3 as25513.asbr.router ~3-5 ms
4 mag9-cr03-be12.51.msk.mts-internet.net ~3-4 ms
5 mag9-cr02-be13.77.msk.mts-internet.net ~3-4 ms
6 a433-cr06-eth-trunk15.msk.mts-internet.net ~4-5 ms
7 mmon-cr02-eth-trunk1.spb.mts-internet.net ~17 ms
8 radio-cr01-ae*.hel.mts-internet.net ~22-23 ms
9 hls-b3-link.ip.twelve99.net ~23 ms
10 hls-b4-link.ip.twelve99.net ~22 ms
11 tln-b6-link.ip.twelve99.net ~25-26 ms
12 riga-b6-link.ip.twelve99.net ~29-30 ms
13 war-b3-link.ip.twelve99.net ~39-40 ms

The destination itself does not respond to ICMP ping, which is expected and does not affect the game UDP connection.

WHAT I WOULD LIKE EA TO INVESTIGATE

Could the network / matchmaking team please check the game data center selection for Russian IP ranges, particularly Moscow and Western Russia?

EA currently operates FC game data centers in Warsaw, Helsinki and Frankfurt.

For my connection, the current automatic selection sends me to Frankfurt at approximately 42-44 ms.

However, when FC selects Warsaw, I get a stable 23-25 ms connection.

This suggests that the current server-selection logic may no longer be choosing the lowest-latency data center for Russian players.

I am NOT asking EA to hard-code every Russian player to one specific server.

Instead, I would ask the team to investigate:

1. Whether Russian IP ranges are currently mapped or prioritised toward Frankfurt.
2. Whether the server-selection / regional routing behaviour changed around the July 29 FC 26 maintenance.
3. Why Warsaw is selected when connecting from a Polish IP but apparently not from my normal Moscow connection.
4. Whether Warsaw and Helsinki can again be considered for players in Moscow / Western Russia when their measured latency is lower than Frankfurt.
5. Whether the matchmaking system is using actual latency measurements or geographical / IP-based regional mapping that may currently be incorrect for Russian networks.

There are already similar reports from Romania, Ukraine and other Eastern European regions describing increased latency and selection of more distant Western European servers after the July 29 maintenance.

The fact that an alternative route immediately reduces my latency from approximately 43 ms to 24 ms and changes the game endpoint from Frankfurt to Warsaw seems like useful evidence that this is not simply a local connection-quality problem.

If the networking team needs additional traceroutes, game endpoint IPs, ISP information or connection tests, I am happy to provide them.

Thank you.