Madden NFL 25 debuted on Steam on August 16, and it does not appear to be going over very properly. Frequent complaints embody poor efficiency, insufficient controller assist, and frequent crashes. There’s one shiny spot amidst all of the upset, although: It does not appear to be faring worse than every other Madden NFL sport on Steam.
The Steam model of Madden NFL 25 at the moment holds a “blended” person score, with simply 57% of the person opinions coming in constructive. Even among the many constructive opinions, a sure lack of enthusiasm is detectable.
“It is soccer,” one Steam person wrote. “It scratches the itch, particularly since we have been robbed of CFB/NCAA [College Football 25, which isn’t available on PC]. Going from [Madden NFL] ’23 to ’25 myself I haven’t got many complaints, the brand new options are fairly cool and all.”
One other described it as “one of the best iteration in latest reminiscence,” however in contrast it to ordering a pizza from Little Caesars. “You eat it as a result of it is acquainted, near your home, and it is simply one thing you do. Every so often you get a pie from there and also you assume to your self, ‘Wow, that is nonetheless crap but it surely’s undoubtedly higher than it usually is’.”
Concurrent participant numbers on Steam aren’t nice both: In response to SteamDB, the concurrent participant depend peaked at 4,380, which appears awfully small for a collection of Madden’s recognition. That is not the whole thing of the Madden inhabitants on PC—it is also out there on the Epic Video games Retailer and the EA App—however I do not assume it is unreasonable to say that Steam very possible makes up the majority of it.
That is particularly attention-grabbing due to EA’s lengthy historical past of not releasing a few of its greatest sports activities video games on PC. Former EA Sports activities chief Peter Moore mentioned in 2008 (by way of the Wayback Machine) that the demand for sports activities video games on PC had “declined quickly” within the face of rising console recognition, whereas the PC market as an entire was rife with piracy. For the Madden NFL collection, that spelled the top of the video games on PC for greater than a decade: Madden NFL 19 was the primary to return to PC since Madden 08.
(Satirically, though which may not be the right phrase for it, whereas the Madden collection was absent from PC it continued to be out there for years on Blackberry units. Make of that what you’ll.)
In mild of that, it is tempting to surprise if Moore was proper. I do not assume the piracy argument holds water, however perhaps the “actual” Madden viewers is on console. However perhaps there is a cause for that: Possibly it is also potential that the PC variations of the Madden video games simply aren’t superb. Not being a Madden follower myself, I assumed at first that this yr’s version was an aberration, however in truth it is completely consistent with the opposite video games within the collection on Steam. Dare to check:
- Madden NFL 25: 57% constructive person opinions, 4,380 peak concurrent participant depend
- Madden NFL 24: 46% constructive person opinions, 9,526 peak concurrent participant depend
- Madden NFL 23: 54% constructive person opinions, 6,169 peak concurrent participant depend
- Madden NFL 22: 57% constructive person opinions, 5,602 peak concurrent participant depend
- Madden NFL 21: 50% constructive person opinions, 3,226 peak concurrent participant depend
You may additionally recall that Madden NFL 24 was the primary sport in years to convey the current-gen model to PC: Previous to that, the PC releases had been ports of previous-gen (PlayStation 4/Xbox One) console variations, and have been accordingly sub-par. So yeah, perhaps most individuals who play Madden go for it on console slightly than PC—and it positive does not appear to be EA is overly enthusiastic about doing something about it.
