Patrick

The production guy ("Photoshop monkey?" seriously?) might simply have been asked to remove the player on the left because the composition was better without a red jersey over at the edge. Either the patch layer got turned off, or he didn't scroll over far enough. Pretty bonehead error, but these things can happen when you have to edit a whole bunch of files on a tight deadline.

By the way -- not saying EA hasn't ever done anything sneaky, of course -- but this example doesn't mean they were trying to fake any effects or misrepresent the graphical quality of the game, it just shows that they thought the guy on the left was distracting.