The EA Sports official Madden NFL Twitter account has published a future plan as Madden 26 has just been confirmed with a promotional image displaying a question and a choice for the gamers regarding who would win between a Big Ten offense and an ACC defense in a hypothetical national championship duel. The tweet was not only an invitation to the college football integration but also a reminder of the existing discontent among the audience who replied with complaints about the Franchise Mode. Thus, it becomes clear that EA’s marketing strategy is the opposite of the players’ concerns through this gap.
So, basically, what happens is that EA Madden comes up with this super cool and fancy graphic, right? The main idea of that graphic is the offense of the Big Ten against the defense of the ACC! The whole hype of college football is more or less coming into Madden 26. And they are like “who do you have??” accompanied by the eyes emoji and the shouting ones. The tweet is aimed at creating excitement for the future and to the sweet diolouge for College Football 25 that is on its way. And, you might say, okay, maybe people will argue which conference is better among casual fans and things like that.
Not even close.
A huge outpouring of anger is what you will see as the replies go down. A strong wall of “FIX FRANCHISE” brick has been built. It is crazy to see it, actually. Dismissive of the question, one after another, users with names like Caleb Almighty and JaeTwoTimez and yes (just… yes) are in complete disregard to the question. One of the most upvoted replies states: “Not interested, just fix the franchise mode.” Another one from RDFL Primetime mentions that 11 days have gone by since EA made a statement that they would give an update on a franchise issue and… nothing. Apparently, the season start week for online franchises has been the last week of December for a month now. A MONTH. And EA has been making graphics for conference matchups.
The nerve, one user commented. Not kidding.
It is a complicated issue, though. The problem is actually not only one bug. Players are complaining about a variety of issues they consider broken or missing. DarkCode explains how players should be able to edit injuries in a similar way as 2k does, and have player peaks last longer instead of the guys falling off the cliff at 28. They moan about the past issues such as the unavailability of transferring the player from Injured Reserve to active, practice injuries ruining player development, no post-June salary cuts, etc. It is a complete list comprising problems of the franchise. Caleb Almighty comes in and says EA is a joke and they should let 2K have the rights. Ouch.
Then there is L-Boogie who brings some light, saying that the Frostbite engine is the main problem with the Madden franchise. It is being claimed that it was “NEVER meant for sports games” and that EA is imposing a shooting engine on football, which in turn is negatively impacting the physics and animations. That kind of criticism is pretty much going to the core of the game. If players are identifying your engine choice as the source of the problem, then the frustration must be really deep.
And the community is pretty much organized around it. User ‘yeah’ states the obvious: “Notice how nearly no one is engaging with this post? And how 3/4th of the comments that do exist are asking about franchise mode?” They are tagging the Madden developers directly, like “Maybe you guys should show that you care, just a little bit.” It’s not that they are just shouting into the void; rather, it’s a day-to-day disappointment target campaign. Brandon Crotti even states: “All of us that Play Madden are getting ready to walk away from you all. You have been ignoring us and we are sick of it.” That’s a clear threat.
It is just totally overpowered. A few folks inquire about the possibility of drafts from College Football being imported into Madden, which is a legitimate question in relation to the post! But they are just like small life boats in a sea of “FIX FRANCHISE” comments. MiscoReal99 tries to ask for updated player likenesses for the final four teams, which is also a valid request! But it gets buried. EA has completely lost control over the narrative here.
It clearly indicates the mindset of the Madden community. They are not interested in tweets with nice graphics about features that will be great in the future. What they want is the core mode where they have spent hundreds of hours over the years, thousands even, to actually work. They want to be notified and to have communication when it breaks. The fact that this promotional effort was such a spectacularly unsuccessful one indicates just how enormous the gap has grown between the company and its players on PlayStation and Xbox.
