In a surprise move, EA has announced that the new Madden is going to being sold via Valve’s Steam storefront when it launches on August 28th. Expanding beyond EA’s Origin storefront for the first time since the franchise returned to PC in 2018, EA has revealed that it will be selling all of Madden 21’s various digital editions via Steam.
As keen PC gamers will know, Madden 21’s surprise Steam release is not the first of the publisher’s series to make the transition. The last 12 months have seen EA slowly migrate its backlog over to Valve’s storefront, with the publisher building up a surprisingly hefty game hub on the platform.
Despite Madden NFL 21 being purchasable on Steam, American-football-loving PC players still won’t be able to bypass Origin completely. The game’s Steam page states that in order to play Madden NFL 21, players will still need to install Origin, create an EA account and have EA’s service running in the background.
The Madden NFL games were first released on PC back in 1996, but between 2007 and 2017 PC support was dropped in favour of console versions. After huge fan demand, EA relented, bringing the series back to PC with Madden NFL 19 -- and until now, they had been locked to EA’s Origin Store since.
Madden NFL 21 launches on August 28 for PC, PS4 and Xbox One. EA has also revealed that the title will be coming to Xbox Series X with a free upgrade for those who pick it up on current gen. While Madden 21 has yet to be confirmed for PS5, the franchise has not missed a PlayStation home console release since the launch of the PS1.
