Madden players can’t use the 50% discount EA promised as an apology for Franchise mode issues

Players were supposed to get a hefty discount on Madden NFL 24

Update (August 5, 2023): EA Sports has announced that it found a solution for fans on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S being unable to use their 50% discount on Madden NFL 24. The company confirmed that all players purchasing the game in this way are going to receive the pre-order content despite missing the deadline, including the early bird MUT item.

Here's how eligible players can get their 50% discount on the Madden NFL 24 Deluxe Edition:

1. Open the Xbox store on your console.
2. Navigate to Home and then Deals.
3. Scroll down to Special Offers and look out for a Madden discount with the Just For You tag.
4. Select the option with the 50% discount and proceed with the purchase.

EA has extended the availability of the compensation offer to September 3, 2023, giving affected players more time to make use of the discount.

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Original (July 25, 2023): Last Christmas brought some unpleasant gifts for Madden NFL 23 players as the Franchise save files for many users were deleted due to a server issue on EA Sports’ end. While some leagues players had put many hours into could be recovered, others remained lost for good.

To make up for this frustrating mistake, EA Sports announced an apology package for affected players, which included access to the beta test of Madden NFL 24 as well as a 50% discount on buying the upcoming iteration of the football sim series. The first part of this compensation rolled out without many problems (though some users apparently never got access despite being eligible for it), granting many victims of the server issue access to an early version of the game via codes that were sent out to their email addresses.

Things aren’t going as smoothly with the second part of the promised apology bundle. According to a thread in the official forum, players can’t seem to use the 50% discount on Madden NFL 24. They could see the 50% discount being advertised in Madden NFL 23, but clicking on this offer directed users to the purchasing process with the full price – no discount in sight. This promo for the 50% discount now seems to have vanished from Madden NFL 23 completely, which feeds the fears of users about EA Sports potentially going back on its word.

Players were looking to pre-order the game before July 22, 2023, which was the deadline to get a special AKA player item in Madden Ultimate Team (MUT) as part of the pre-order campaign – but with the discount not working as promised, the affected players have now missed this window, adding to their frustration about this whole ordeal.

Users first reported on this issue about a month ago, which should have given EA Sports more than enough time to come up with a solution to avoid this exact situation. One player wrote that they spent two hours talking to members of the customer support for Xbox and EA about it and got confirmation that EA was aware of the issues at that point. They were told that a solution was being worked on. Other users reported similar things with one player even being told by two different employees from EA’s support team that the issue had already been resolved despite that evidently not being the case.

An EA Sports representative finally addressed the concerns on the forum on July 18, 2023, stating:

“We're currently looking into the reports about the 50% discount not working for those who were eligible for the Madden NFL 23 Franchise make-good. Once we have more news to share we'll follow up here.

Thanks for bearing with us while we're investigating this.”

There haven’t been any official updates on this case since then.

We’ve asked EA Sports for an update on the investigation as well as any plans to enable players to still get the pre-order bonus and will update this article when there is a new development.