Madden NFL - title

For the past few years, Madden Franchise gamers have been reporting a glitch in which the game will softlock and hang on the loading screen after exiting a Franchise match. If this happens, the only way to resume the game is to force quit the Madden app, re-launch, and attempt to resume the Franchise. If this happens after the score goes final, then all progress will be lost, and the user will have to re-play that match from the beginning. For some users, this softlock occurs every time they finish a Franchise match, which renders Franchise Mode completely un-playable. This softlock glitch goes back to at least Madden 21, and might go back further, and it seems to happen to both online and off-line Franchise players.

I am going to explain the glitch itself, so that everybody knows what, specific softlock I'm talking about. Then I'll go over my proposed work-around. Then I'll discuss why I think the softlock happens, how it can potentially be fixed, and the specific game conditions that lead to me experiencing this softlock.

UPDATE 18 January, 2022:

Apparently, EA thinks they've finally fixed this bug in the most recent update. It only took 2 releases for them to finally do it. Oddly, I didn't see this patch announcement until after publishing this work-around, even though I had searched for it. Yet, oddly enough, I encountered the bug this past weekend, after the patch was supposedly released. So it's possible this bug is still in the game, and EA didn't catch all the causes. So if you encounter this bug in your games, try the work-around described below. Hopefully it works.

What happens, and how to work-around it

Usually, Franchise matches autosave after every play. If the game freezes, or the connection to the server is lost during an online Franchise match, Franchise games can usually be resumed from the last play that finished before exiting the Franchise match. If you get booted, or the game freezes, it usually only requires replaying one play, maybe.

But if the softlock happens while loading the Franchise Hub after finishing the match, you're screwed. This is because the in-game autosave is apparently deleted after the score goes final, but the Franchise file is not saved until the user returns to the Franchise Hub. So if a crash or freeze happens between these points, the whole match's progress is lost. This is bad programming from EA Sports and Tiburon -- no "ifs", "ands", or "buts" about it.

There is usually an auto-save after each play in Franchise matches.

I've been experiencing this problem on both PS4 and PS5 versions of Madden 22, and after a bit of experimentation, I think I may have found a work-around -- at least for online Franchise players. This work-around is based on my suspicion of why the softlock is happening, and takes advantage of teh in-game auto-save to try to prevent the softlock from happening.

The work-around is to try to exit the match prior to the score going final, and then resume from the autosave. For example, just before the last play of the game, pause and exit to the menu. Even if the game softlocks on the loading screen, you can force-quit, re-launch Madden, and resume the Franchise match from the auto-save. If you do this, you should hopefully be able to execute the final play, finish the game, and hopefully Madden will properly load the Franchise Hub. Just do not let the score go final before closing and re-loading!

If you are playing offline, you must force-close the game. Do not simply pause and quit, as doing so will delete in-match auto-save and return you to the Franchise Hub. If you force-close, then you'll be able to resume from the auto-save next time to try to load your offline Franchise.

Quitting and re-loading the autosave before the last play of the game may
preserve progress and bypass the softlock.
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