Anthem’s Final Day: BioWare Bids Farewell to Its Destiny-Like Game
▼ Summary
– EA permanently shut down the servers for BioWare’s online game Anthem on January 12th, rendering it unplayable.
– The exact shutdown time was unclear, with speculation it would align with either midnight Pacific Time or a morning maintenance window.
– Players returned to the game for final sessions and shared farewells, highlighting its visual beauty and their emotional investment in characters.
– The shutdown was unceremonious, with no in-game event to mark the occasion and all standard systems functioning until the end.
– Anthem, released in 2019, failed to achieve lasting success and plans for a major overhaul (Anthem 2.0) were ultimately abandoned.
The servers for BioWare’s ambitious multiplayer shooter, Anthem, have now been taken offline, marking the definitive end of the game’s journey. After years of struggle and an ultimately canceled revival effort, the title is no longer accessible, leaving its virtual world and player characters frozen in time. This final shutdown concludes a chapter for both the developers and a dedicated community that found moments of brilliance within the troubled project.
As the scheduled date arrived, the precise moment the servers would go dark remained uncertain. Speculation pointed to a shutdown aligned with either the publisher’s headquarters timezone or the game’s traditional maintenance window. This ambiguity seemed to fuel a wave of nostalgic farewells from players across online forums. The game’s subreddit became a poignant memorial, filled with screenshots and clips of personalized Javelin exosuits as fans shared their final experiences. These posts served as a collective tribute, highlighting the strong bonds formed even around a flawed experience.
Looking back, it’s impossible to ignore the visual spectacle Anthem offered. Soaring through the storm-wracked jungles of the planet Coda, navigating immense ancient ruins, and flying alongside exotic creatures created a genuinely stunning atmosphere. The detailed, crumbling architecture of the home base, Fort Tarsis, provided a beautiful and melancholic space to explore. In its final days, there was a noticeable surge of activity as lapsed players returned for one last flight or raced to complete lingering achievements.
The reality that hundreds of hours of progression and personalized characters would simply vanish offers a stark reminder of the impermanent nature of always-online games. These digital personas, once proudly displayed in social hubs, are now inaccessible. There was no in-game event or special send-off to mark the occasion; the experience remained functionally identical until the very end, with the in-game store still operational and progression systems running as normal.
Electronic Arts had confirmed the decision to cease development and sunset the servers back in February 2021, simultaneously removing Anthem from all digital storefronts. The company publicly thanked the player base for their passion while clarifying that no offline mode would be made available. Launched in 2019 with significant expectations, the game failed to achieve the lasting success its developers envisioned. A planned extensive overhaul, commonly referred to as “Anthem 2.0” or “Anthem Next,” was in development for some time but was formally abandoned, sealing the game’s fate. The servers have now followed suit, bringing a quiet conclusion to a project that promised much but ultimately could not sustain its own world.
(Source: EuroGamer)
