Its a relatively new situation for gaming, but with the next generation consoles we now have a lot more interaction with the cloud to our gaming experience.
Madden is no different, and a lot of the supported game modes happen through the support of servers run by EA Sports.
Franchise is part of this, and a lot of organized leagues worldwide rely on these to run their games.
For those that haven't seen or been part of these leagues, it involves up to 32 different people coordinating themselves to each own a franchise. They can be based anywhere in the world and then arrange to play their games, trade their players and manage their teams to glory.
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At some point yesterday, a lot of players started to report not being able to get access. Leagues were having to re-organize games but without any definitive timeline of what was wrong and when they would be able to.
Embarrassingly for EA, some tweets surfaced of their own support team not even knowing Franchise had an online element. We have previously covered the divide between MUT and Franchise, with a lot of Franchise players feeling like they don't get any attention given MUT is where EA earn their coin (pun intended).
EA support frustrating Madden players
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EA have officially come out and said it is "server maintenance" that will start today at 9.30am ET. Theres no confirmation if this is planned or unplanned.
EA Sports Community Manager responding to Madden players
This hasn't affected all Franchises, which points to what could be an issue isolated in certain servers, but the current situation is that many Franchise players still can't access their games and are worried that they will lose the entire save and all the blood sweat and tears that have gone into it.
This is far from ideal with the weekend approaching, and is yet another thumb to the eyes of the dedicated franchise players that make up a good deal of the Madden community.