Madden 23 Crashing At The Main Menu Following The Latest Patch

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 was 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.

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, but the team has yet to communicate how that might happen or if such attempts have been made. On December 31, the team said it would “communicate an updated timeline next week around the potential restoration of save files from a backup.” Today is January 12.

We’ll update this story when (or if?) Madden becomes accessible again.