Madden 21: EA pledges to fix Franchise amid fan backlash

EA promises to provide an update on future Madden 21 Franchise fixes.

Earlier this week, EA dropped the details for Madden 21’s franchise modes. This included Face of the Franchise and what EA has now dubbed “Classic” Franchise.

What used to be one of the cornerstone modes of the annual football series had to been relegated to a “classic” mode, seemingly suggesting it would continue to be placed on the back burner as EA focuses on more lucrative modes such as Ultimate Team. It was a slap in the face to the franchise fan community who had been promised that Madden 21 would finally deliver oft-requested features.

What was an even bigger slap to the face was the fact that the list of features and improvements for Classic Franchise was a footnote in the post, an eight-bullet list that was more reminiscent of a mid-season patch than a full-fledged new title. Frustration reached a tipping point and after years of being ignored, fans took to social media with the hashtag “#FixMaddenFranchise”.

We’ve seen these sort of reactions in the past from the Madden community but usually on a small enough scale where EA can ignore them. But for the first time, it seemed the entire Madden fanbase was united in their effort to get EA to notice.

And boy did EA take notice. It was apparently so bad that Madden Executive Producer Sean Graddy put out a response on Thursday night addressing the community.

"“We see your ‘fix Madden Franchise’ tweets and we understand your frustration. The Franchise community is critically important to us, and we appreciate your passion for Madden NFL. We’re reading your feedback and we clearly understand that you want more.“We’ve seen requests for details around what the Franchise community can expect moving forward. And while I don’t have a lot of details I can share with you right now, I can tell you that today, our team is actively working on bolstering plans to support Franchise in Madden NFL 21 and beyond.”"

Madden 21 is set to launch on August 28 (or August 25 for those who buy one of the special editions). It’s doubtful there’s enough time between now and then for EA to make any meaningful changes to Franchise by launch, but Graddy did promise to at least provide updates to fans about Franchise mode moving forward prior to the game’s launch. By at least detailing their plans ahead of launch on how to fix Franchise mode, fans will at least be able to go into this year’s game knowing what’s to come with the mode.