At the end of 2022, an unknown number of online leagues in Madden 23 were deleted overnight due to what EA called a “data-storage issue that resulted in Franchise files being corrupted.” Some players who were affected eventually got their leagues back, while others never did. The total number of affected players or leagues was never revealed, but it wasn’t an especially rare event, as the game’s subreddit, EA Forums, and various Discord servers were flooded with players decrying their leagues’ disappearances. Now, in Madden 26, something similar seems to be happening.
It hasn’t occurred in one fell swoop, and a different–possibly more hopeful–error message is greeting affected players, but it’s unclear why it’s happening or if affected leagues can be salvaged.
The error message some players are getting reads, “Error: The requested league is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later. We apologize for any inconvenience. You have been returned to the Franchise launcher.”
Normally, this is the message players may see if they try to access their league while a patch is being rolled out. But in this case, some players have been stuck staring at this message for weeks. One player in my league said his other league has been inaccessible for a month and a half. Yesterday, our 32-player league was hit with the same bug. We’re now tentatively structuring our Plan B in case we need it.
There’s no shortage of forum threads in which players are worried about their leagues having become permanently unavailable, like this one, this one, and this one. In fact, browsing by Franchise-related posts turns up many similar threads. Naturally, the same is happening on Reddit.
It’s hard to say if the issue is happening more recently, but it’s definitely affecting different leagues at different times, rather than hitting a number of leagues all at once like in 2022. Some players have reported that their leagues came back to life after a few days, while others have given up after weeks of waiting. On the EA Forums, a community manager provided an update yesterday, saying, “Apologies for the late reply on this one. We have notified the team that this has been happening with the leagues, and they are currently investigating this. Once we have more info on these or need any further information, we will update this thread.”
This latest Franchise lockout doesn’t seem to be occurring for the same reasons as when it happened in late 2022, but for affected players, the result is the same: A great deal of investment, sometimes hundreds of hours, is getting wiped out in the blink of an eye.
GameSpot has contacted EA for comment on this issue and will update this story if the publisher responds.
About The Author
