EA Removes CPR Celebration From Madden NFL 23 After Damar Hamlin Incident
A celebration is being pulled from NFL 23, after the shocking collapse of Damar Hamlin, and accusations the CPR celebration is inappropriate.
11th Jan 2023 10:47
Images via EA Sports
EA Removes CPR Celebration From Madden NFL 23 After Damar Hamlin Incident
A celebration is being pulled from NFL 23, after the shocking collapse of Damar Hamlin, and accusations the CPR celebration is inappropriate.
11th Jan 2023 10:47
Images via EA Sports
Celebrations and emotes have a habit of biting back. They're seemingly harmless additions to the games they feature in when they drop, but circumstance comes back around to make them feel a little… inappropriate.
A big example of this comes from the king of all emotes - ever since the tragedy that occurred at the Astroworld festival, Fortnite's Travis Scott cosmetics haven't reappeared in its in-game store - and frankly, it's for good reason.
Now, another game has stripped an emote from its roster after becoming an unfortunately hot topic.
NFL 23 Removes CPR Celebration
In the wake of the shocking and upsetting collapse of the Buffalo Bills' Damar Hamlin during a Monday Night Football game, EA has made the decision to pull one of Madden NFL 23's celebrations, on account of it being a little insensitive.
The 24-year-old requiring CPR to have his heart started again was harrowing for a lot of football fans, which makes the celebration simply titled 'CPR' a little out of touch.
The celebration sees a player, after performing a touchdown, lie on the floor as another player simulates a resuscitation on them.
"EA Sports is taking steps to remove the celebration from Madden NFL 23 via an update in the coming days," reveals a spokesperson from EA to CBS Sports.
NFL 23 Loses Player Save Files
This isn't the only controversy to strike NFL 23, as a new data storage issue has meant that waves of players have lost their save files. Plus, it gets worse - EA is now reporting that 60% of the recently wiped files are unrecoverable.
"Unfortunately, if you logged into Franchise leagues during this time [a period between December 28 and 29], your data was affected due to a data storage issue that resulted in Franchise files being corrupted," a spokesperson said on a discussion board.
"First off, we are sorry that this happened. We know how important your franchises are to you and we are actively working on a fix to restore some files via a backup as soon as possible. However, not all affected leagues can be restored. The team is currently projecting around 40% of leagues to be recovered." Great.
It's not a particularly good time to be a Madden fan - but we can at least appreciate that the CPR celebration had to go. It'd certainly help if players could save their progress, though.
About The Author
Joseph Kime
Joseph Kime is the Senior Trending News Journalist for GGRecon from Devon, UK. Before graduating from MarJon University with a degree in Journalism, he started writing music reviews for his own website before writing for the likes of FANDOM, Zavvi and The Digital Fix. He is host of the Big Screen Book Club podcast, and author of Building A Universe, a book that chronicles the history of superhero movies. His favourite games include DOOM (2016), Celeste and Pokemon Emerald.
