After delaying the announcement of Madden NFL 21 earlier this month out of respect for protests against police violence and racism, Electronic Arts has now officially unveiled the game. NFL MVP Lamar Jackson is on the cover, and inside players will find new features including a Face of the Franchise: Rise to Fame "documentary career mode," more than 50 new Superstar and X-Factor abilities, new offensive and defensive gameplay mechanics, and team playbooks that will be updated "based on new schemes and new plays utilized during the real-life NFL season."
Maybe the biggest change, though, is that it's on Steam. Origin is still EA's PC storefront of choice, naturally, but all three editions of the game—the standard, the deluxe, and the MVP, which includes three days of early access, 12 Madden Ultimate Team gold team fantasy packs, and other in-game swag—are also available for pre-purchase on Steam. In fact, it's headlining the Steam front page right now.
NFL 21 is currently the only Madden game on Steam, and it arrives as part of a major move by Electronic Arts back onto the platform. EA finalized a partnership with Valve in October 2019 to bring its games to the platform, a process that began with the release of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. But it picked up major steam (sorry) earlier this month with the release of two big batches of games including Dragon Age Inquisition, Need for Speed: Heat, Battlefield 5, Star Wars: Battlefront 2, and many others.
EA also said that future games would be released on Steam as well as Origin, and since it followed through on that promise with Madden NFL 21, it seems likely that we can expect the same from FIFA 21 when it's announced. The subscription-based EA Access service is also on the way to Steam, although we're still waiting on details about that.
Madden NFL 21 is slated to be out on August 28.
