Unable to load up Madden on EA Play First Play Trial - Stuck on loading screen

Hey, @Gmballer42 

This was scheduled to be fixed in the February update. Is there any way you can un-install the game and re-install it to see if that has any positive effect? I'm curious if the previous version that's installed is still causing this, unless you installed the game after the latest update. 

@EA_Blueberry I can confirm this is STILL broken, in the exact same way, even after fully reinstalling via Steam. I couldn't even play the free weekend that was offered because of this bug. Absolutely ridiculous.

Hi @EA_Blueberry 

I can confirm that I deleted and reinstalled the game. It still doesn't work. This seems like it should be a priority since it's affecting so many users. Is there any way to push out an incremental update with the fix? It's truly disappointing that this bug has persisted for this long ☹️

I can't even add the Trial to my Origin account anymore, it's disappeared 

Hey @EA_Blueberry , I've been scrolling through the forum and while this start-up problem should've been fixed in the february update, I keep encountering it on my PS5. I can successfully load the game, but in the main menu I'm unable to start any game mode. Deleted the game and did re-installed it but it didn't fix it. And because of the trial period on my account I'm unable to even buy the Madden deluxe version that is on sale right now, because it says I'm the owner of the base game due to the trial. 

This has been going on for months and I keep seeing new people on here with the same problems...it's still not fixed!  I wasted my time keeping track on this forum for updates that haven't solved anything.

There are so many folks with the same issues and EA still hasn't addressed it.  These people are your customers, come on EA!

I am on Xbox Game Pass and did get lucky to try the game out when it was "free to play" for a few days and wow, the optimized version was not impressive at all IMO.  My game impression has nothing this forum and is strictly game play.

EA, you're big disappointment.

OK so I found a fix that might help you guys.
After this wasn't working for me in the fall I decided I would try to give it one more chance since it was Super Bowl Sunday. With my luck it did work. I was going to keep it running while I watched the superbowl because I feared having the same issues as I did before, but I didn't want to loose 4 hours of my trial so I turned it off. But sadly once I turned it on all the connection issues returned not being able to click on anything in the main menu screen. I did delete the game along with all my data stored in the saved files and then reinstalled it. I still wasn't able to get it to work.  However, this was my fix: Note I don't know if this is a permanent fix but so far I am currently playing it one more time.

While the game is still running go to your playstation settings and playstation storage and open up your saved data and delete any files relating to madden 21. The application might restart doing this but when it loads up even if it says connection issues, just persist through those popups. When the main menu appears hopefully you will see a small menu appear on the bottom left that you didn't see the previous times...I think it was related to some sort of difficulty setting. Nontheless it should start up a video that will bring you to a Kansas City and Baltimore Ravens matchup where you are able to play the game. Also if this doesn't work the first time try these steps again since it might work. I am using a PS5 though.  EA hire me as a QA tester 🙂 

Ok an update based off what I wrote yesterday.

I'm glad I got to play 3 hours last night but that sucks this solution no longer works.

Because now when you delete the save data and go back into the game the game freezes when the progress bar reaches 90%.

I tried reinstalling the game too. 

Now the game just crashes with an error report.

I can no longer even get into the main menu,

Hopefully it could be that they are working on it.

But for now it no longer works ☹️ 

To suggest this has become somewhat of a complete mess , would be an insult to a complete mess. Shocking behaviour from an alleged “big” publisher.