Electronic Arts has acknowledged that 60% or more of Madden NFL 23 players impacted by the recent database storage issue may have lost their franchise save files permanently. There is little more horrifying to a video game player than the idea of losing a save fail. Losing a Madden NFL 23 Connected Franchise Mode save file, which can involve hours upon hours of online multiplayer and franchise management, is as bad as it can get. That's exactly what many Madden NFL 23 players are facing, however.It's unclear exactly when Madden NFL 23's database storage issue first hit players. What is clear is that Electronic Arts issued a statement on December 26, the day after Christmas, confirming a problem and stating it was being investigated. CFM was not disabled, nor were players warned to avoid it. On December 28, EA posted that the issue was fixed and that CFM could be played without issue. Unfortunately, the opposite was true. Playing Madden NFL 23 CFM on December 28 is now confirmed to have caused CFM save file corruption. The latest update from EA includes an apology, as Madden NFL 23's developers know "how important your franchises are to you." However, apologies don't fix save file corruption. EA is working on a solution but is not optimistic regarding what it can salvage. While the fix is still in development, at best, EA believes that it will only be able to help recover "around 40% of leagues." That means that EA believes as much as or more than 60% of Madden NFL 23 players experiencing a corrupted save file have lost it permanently.
All Madden NFL 23 players that are currently experiencing the error are at risk of having permanently lost their save files. No timeline is provided for when EA's fix will go out, delivering "backups" as available. Again, 60% or more of impacted players are expected to permanently lose their Madden NFL 23 CFM saves.
For those Madden NFL 23 players stressing out regarding whether they've been impacted and not wanting to check their saves, EA has provided some guidance on who was affected. The only Madden NFL 23 players impacted were those that logged on to CFM after 2:48 PM ET on Wednesday, December 28, up until 12:45 AM ET on Thursday, December 29. Anyone that dealt with the connection issues on December 26 and 27 should be fine.
This is an unfortunate situation all around. EA appears to have tried to deliver a fix that wasn't fully tested, and it has fried a lot of players' CFM save files. There's no fix or restitution. Players will have to wait to see if EA can provide them with backup save files or otherwise start over in Madden NFL 23's Franchise mode.
Madden NFL 23 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.