Madden NFL 25 debuts Couple August 16, and the game doesn’t seem to be well-received. Common complaints include destitute performance, insufficient controller support, and repeated crashes. There is one dazzling spot amidst all the chaos, though: it doesn’t seem to be doing any worse than any other Madden NFL game on Steam.
The Steam version of Madden NFL 25 currently has a “mixed” user rating, with only 57% of user reviews being positive. Even among the positive reviews, there’s a certain lack of enthusiasm.
Another described it as “the best version I can remember”, but compared it to Ordering pizza from Little Caesars“You eat it because it’s familiar, close to home, and you just do it. Every now and then you buy a cake there and think, ‘Wow, it’s still crap, but it’s definitely better than usual.'”
The number of players playing simultaneously on Steam is also not impressive: According to SteamDB Databaseconcurrent players peaked at 4,380, which seems awfully low for a Madden series that’s as popular as it is. That’s not the entire Madden PC population — the game is also available on the Epic Games Store and EA App — but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that Steam probably makes up the majority of it.
That’s especially fascinating given EA’s long history of not releasing some of its biggest sports games on PC. Former EA Sports boss Peter Moore said in 2008 (via Wayback Machine) that demand for sports games on PC “dropped precipitously” in the face of the growing popularity of consoles, while the PC market as a whole was rife with piracy. For the Madden NFL series, this meant the end of PC gaming for over a decade: Madden NFL 19 was the first to hit PC since Madden 08.
(Interestingly enough, and perhaps that’s not the right term, the Madden series, while not available on PC, was available on platforms for years. Blackberry Devices. Do with it what you want.)
In featherlight of this, it’s tempting to wonder if Moore was right. I don’t think the piracy argument holds up, but maybe the “real” Madden audience is on consoles. But maybe there’s a reason for that: It’s also possible that the PC versions of Madden games just aren’t very good. Not being a Madden fan, I initially assumed this year’s release was an aberration, but it’s actually perfectly in line with the other games in the series on Steam. Dare to compare:
- Madden NFL 25: 57% positive user reviews, 4380 peak concurrent players
- Madden NFL 24:46% positive user reviews, 9526 peak concurrent players
- Madden NFL 23: 54% positive user reviews, 6169 peak concurrent players
- Madden NFL 22: 57% positive user reviews, 5602 max simultaneous players
- Madden NFL 21:50% positive user reviews, 3226 peak concurrent players
You may also recall that Madden NFL 24 was the first game in years to bring a current-gen version to PC: Before that, the PC versions were ports of the last-gen console versions (PlayStation 4/Xbox One) and were correspondingly subpar. So yeah, maybe most people who play Madden are opting for the console version over the PC one — and it certainly doesn’t sound like EA is particularly interested in doing anything about it.
