Madden is a staple franchise for fans of sports video games. Fans that want to enjoy an NFL game might dabble with the series, and the most recent release, Madden NFL 23, has had quite the fiasco. While only released back in August of 2022, it looks like those that sunk countless hours into the Franchise mode might have lost everything. If you were trying to enjoy this game during your holiday break, EA, unfortunately, has some bad news to share, but hopefully, it doesn’t directly affect your gameplay history.
There were some troublesome connection issues during the holiday break, and it left fans waiting on a fix. Shortly after Christmas, the developers alerted followers that they had fixed the Franchise mode issues. Players were then able to log back into the game and start progressing through their save. However, we’re finding out that quite a few players found that their saves were corrupted. As expected, developers went right back to work trying to resolve the issue, but it didn’t look good.
We’re finding out now that there was a data storage issue, and it seems that those who found their saves corrupted might not ever get their data back. According to reports going out right now, there’s only about 40% of the saves can be fixed. Those accounts would find their save files back in order, but the rest are simply out of luck. All the hard work put into Franchise mode might have been for nothing, as it could mean restarting from scratch. Fortunately, this only affected accounts that logged into the game and tried playing through the Franchise mode.
Those that logged in on December 28, 2022, at 2:45 PM through Thursday, 29, 2022, at 12:45 PM EST are affected. Although, it seems that not everyone during that period is affected. Some might have found that the bug didn’t hit their save file. While we’re hopeful that a fix is coming and perhaps the save files can be resorted back to normal, it’s certainly not looking good for the majority of players with this bug.
First off, we are sorry that this happened. We know how important your franchises are to you and we are actively working on a fix to restore some files via a backup as soon as possible. However, not all affected leagues can be restored. The team is currently projecting around 40% of leagues to be recovered. We will communicate an updated timeline next week around the potential restoration of save files from a backup.
EA Statement
Currently, Madden NFL 23 is available to pick up and play today. Players are able to purchase the game for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S platforms. If you haven’t picked the game up yet, you can check out the game trailer in the video embedded below.
