Madden 23 Crashing Bug Now Fixed; Read The January 12 Patch Notes

Update: Tiburon announced this issue should now be resolved. We tested it and are now able to get into the game.

Original story: In what is just the latest in a long line of gaffes within Madden NFL 23, the game is currently inaccessible for some number of players today. Some players who have downloaded the latest patch are unable to get past the start menu, as it reliably crashes with no apparent workaround for affected players.

Server maintenance and an accompanying game patch were announced late in the evening of January 11 and applied overnight in US time zones. We can infer that not all players have been hit with this issue as there is, at the time of writing, one person streaming the game on Twitch. However, many in the comments of that stream are questioning how the player is able to access the game right now, so it seems like this current issue is affecting many players. In a tweet, the team said it’s aware of the issue. On Twitter and Reddit, players are also widely reporting the same issue.

Madden 23 is no stranger to server-side issues. Despite a reasonably improved on-field product, this season’s game is certainly the most problematic in years, with the game routinely causing issues for both Madden Ultimate Team (MUT) and Franchise players dating back to September. Past issues have included rosters reverting to previous versions, MUT rewards not being dispersed on time or at all, leagues moving backward in time sometimes in chunks as big and costly as multiple seasons, and the worst of all, 60% of recently bugged Franchise saves that were accidentally deleted forever.

The game’s lead studio, Tiburon, said it believes it can restore as many as 40% of leagues affected by the Franchise save corruption, and revealed in the January 12 patch notes that the save corruption bug affected only 2% of all leagues created since launch, meaning 60% of those leagues are gone for good, not 60% of all leagues which was wrongly reported in some instances since the issue was revealed. However, this number reasonably includes more active leagues, as inactive leagues were less likely to have logged in and played during the window of time that proved to be costly for saved data.