For years, EA Sports has managed to sweep criticism of its annual football video game release under the rug. High sales and a knowledgeable PR department meant there was no backlash or impact on the company’s bottom line.
Gamers are getting more and more fed up, however, and their anger at “Madden 21” leads to a breakthrough in 2020. The game has the worst Metacritic score of all time at 0.4 / 10, and several times over. the last two months. for a better product led to nationwide anti-EA trends on Twitter.
EA has the exclusive rights to the NFL simulation games, which means it has no console competition. It has been accused of becoming lazy due to its grip on the market, which critics have seen led the company to stop making significant improvements, make botched programming errors, and fail to revert. Franchise mode features that existed over a decade ago, but have since been removed.
On Sunday, people flocked to Twitter again to detonate “Madden 21.” Fans got the “#NFLDropEA” trend in the US in a call for the league to end its partnership with EA.
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Some people used Sunday’s trend to post examples of basic flaws and problems in “Madden 21.” Others were nostalgic for the heyday of the mid-2000s, when football video games were considered edgy and fun.
Here are some of those tweets:
Tired of games feeling like you’re still playing on Xbox 360. Avatars look so horribly bad and stadium and team personalities so boring and bland, create a new game for once or go. Enjoy this clip! #nfldropea pic.twitter.com/N34mdeWHn6
– QueasyMcSqueezy (@ EatPant223) August 30, 2020
I hope the @NFL will one day demand a better product from EA.
– TJ Lang (@ TJLang70) August 30, 2020
I agree the NFL needs to drop EA. If 2K had the rights to produce NFL simulation games, things would be so different. NFL 2K5 is still one of the best soccer games to date. Allowing EA to have a monopoly on NFL simulation games is criminal. They don’t care. #NFLdropEA
– AviatorGaming (@AviatorGaming) August 30, 2020