EA admits only 40 per cent of franchise cloud saves can be "recovered" following Madden 23 downtime

Madden 23 developer Electronic Arts has confirmed that it may not be able to "restore" up to 60 per cent of players' franchise cloud save data following unscheduled downtime earlier this week. 

In a frank blog post published today, the team acknowledged that players who logged into the game from Wednesday, December 28 to Thursday, December 29, were given an "unavailable" error and may have had their files "corrupted".

Whilst players who didn't log in during this time are not impacted by the issue, the blog adds that up to 60 per cent of players who did log in during that period may now find that EA cannot recover their leagues at all. 

"First off, we are sorry that this happened," the team wrote. "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 per cent of leagues to be recovered."

The blog post concludes by saying that more information will be available next week with an "updated timeline" that will communicate "the potential restoration of save files from a backup". In the meantime, players that did log in and have lost data are "encourage[d] to start a new franchise as the mode is up and running".

GamesRadar+'s Madden 23 review awarded the sports game three out of five stars, calling the series "stuck, and in dire need of revisiting its origins".

"No matter what the package says, this series is stuck, and in dire need of revisiting the reasons for its origins," we wrote at the time. 

"If the death of its cover star can’t ignite that spark, if two console generation change overs can’t, nothing likely will in the near term. This isn’t fun to write year after year either. Consider the pandemic, the rush to pay homage to John Madden, all while trying to revitalize the pass/run systems; empathy for the developers runs high. But it’s the same game. It really seems that way."

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