Madden-ing Glitch Irks Gamers

theodp writes "A vexing glitch in Madden NFL 2005 has players complaining in online forums and even demanding a recall. Because repeated offensive shifts exhaust the defense before the ball is snapped, EA's forced online players to turn off the fatigue setting, which disables the exploit, but spoils the realism of the game. At least you've got an excuse for that first-round Madden Challenge loss."

Wait a sec...

[JabberWokky]

I'm not sure I understand, but this appears to be a bug that you have to intentionally take advantage of (by changing the offensive choice over and over). Couldn't this be easily solved... by not playing with people who cheat?

--
Evan "I trust people across the table when they say they rolled a nat 20"

Recall Sounds About Right

[illuminata]

Basically, if this catches on, people using this glitch could ruin online gameplay. The people in the know would exploit the cheat. It also makes for a cheap way to win offline as well. The fact that this one affects the mechanics of gameplay should warrant a recall in my mind.

Now, I'm not talking about having the FTC step in here, but EA should do the right thing. They seem pretty screwed by this. If they own up to the mistake they get made fun of in the press, by players, and it gives Sega Sports some more firepower. On the other hand, they could piss off that very large Madden fanbase and a large portion of them could migrate to Sega Sports. Granted, some people do play both. However, many people are already solely playing ESPN NFL Football because of its $20 price point.

If they don't plan on fixing this, they should probably scrap the Madden Challenge. People can probably find sneaky ways to pull this glitch off (possibly over multiple plays) to where a judge wouldn't be able to throw out the person using it to their advantage.

This could become a major blow to EA's bread and butter franchise. EA needs to come to a smart, fast decision on how to handle this. You can bet your ass that they're busting out the champagne at Sega headquarters over this one.