An online data storage issue with Madden NFL 23 at the end of December has led to corrupted save files in the Connected Franchise Mode (CFM), with EA admitted that they will likely be unable to recover around 60% of the affected save files.
The problem emerged just after Christmas on Monday 26th December, with EA stating that they were “aware of players experiencing connection issues when trying to connect to CFM.” It took until Wednesday 28th December to put a fix in place, with EA giving the all clear that “users should now be able to play CFM without issue.”
The problem is that they weren’t. For a 22-hour period from Wedensday to Thursday, from 2:45PM EST to 12:45PM EST the following day, any players trying to log in would see that their franchise save data was corrupted. Given that this was the holiday period with people more likely to be available to play, this could be a significant portion of the game’s player base.
Thankfully, people playing CFM after that time are completely unaffected, but EA expect to only be able to recover 40% of the files, restoring from backups where possible.
EA has issued a statement:
First off, we are sorry that this happened. We know how important your franchises are to you and we are actively working on a fix to restore some files via a backup as soon as possible. However, not all affected leagues can be restored. The team is currently projecting around 40% of leagues to be recovered. We will communicate an updated timeline next week around the potential restoration of save files from a backup.
It’s not clear how EA’s server backups weren’t able to preserve all of the affected accounts, though highlights the general importance of data security for modern saves. Many games now require online connections even for single-player modes and progress can be lost or wiped clean when servers are switched off – this is particularly true of sports games which have a more limited shelf life. However, even for local games, it’s quite easy for your personal game save files to be lost, superseded or corrupted without a versioned backup in place. PS+, Xbox and Nintendo Switch Online only ever preserve the most recent save file.
Source: EA via Ars Technica
