Anthem’s Legacy: A Game EA and BioWare Want to Forget

The servers for BioWare’s multiplayer title Anthem have been permanently shut down, rendering the online-only experience completely unplayable and effectively erasing it from existence. This final switch-off marks the conclusive end for a project that once represented a bold, expensive gamble for both the developer and publisher Electronic Arts. For players who invested time and money into building their characters and exploring its world, the closure represents a tangible loss, raising difficult questions about preservation and ownership in the age of live-service gaming.

I recently purchased a physical copy for a mere £2, a price that speaks volumes about its perceived value. In a few days, that disc would become a literal paperweight. There was a peculiar feeling in excitedly unwrapping a brand-new game, knowing its digital heart would stop beating within the week. This urgency drove me to experience Anthem’s final moments firsthand, to walk through a world on the brink of being switched off forever.

Playing it now, the sense of unrealized potential is overwhelming. The game’s core flight mechanics remain a spectacular joy, a face-filling rush of speed and freedom as you boost through the moody, vine-choked jungles of Coda. Diving from brooding skies into deep water and soaring past colossal ruins is a consistent visual and tactile pleasure. The other half of the experience, the story hub of Fort Tarsis, showcases BioWare’s signature attention to detail. It’s a dense, lived-in space of cobblestone and advanced technology, filled with elaborate animations and voice work, a clear attempt to graft a narrative-driven RPG onto a multiplayer framework.

This disconnect between its brilliant movement and its undercooked systems is what defines Anthem. A poignant comment on its subreddit called it the “greatest What If game” ever made, and that feels accurate. Whether imagining a full single-player campaign in Tarsis or a more focused co-op experience in its stunning open zones, you constantly see the ghost of a better game. The bones of something enjoyable were present, but they never fully coalesced. Plans for a comprehensive “Anthem 2.0” overhaul were abandoned, leaving the original vision half-formed.

The sheer amount of effort and money poured into Anthem is palpable, which makes its quiet termination harder to accept. Even harder is the treatment of the dedicated players who stayed. In the final days, a mix of the curious and the loyal returned. I found groups for missions without trouble, and the social Launch Bay held players showing off their hard-earned armor, a quiet community gathering for a last look.

What feels like a profound misstep is how EA and BioWare handled this farewell. Beyond a standard thank-you in the closure announcement, there were no in-game celebrations or gestures of gratitude. The digital storefront continued to charge for cosmetic items until the very end; the grind for experience and crafting materials remained unchanged. This was a perfect opportunity to break the rules, to gift players unlimited resources or unlock everything as a final, delirious thank-you. Instead, the game was abandoned in death as it was in life, its systems left to run indifferently until the plug was pulled.

This conclusion forces larger questions about the lifecycle of live-service games. Should a service run indefinitely if the player base dwindles? What protections should exist for players who lose access to purchased content and hundreds of hours of progress? Movements like Stop Killing Games are pushing for answers, advocating for solutions like community-run servers or official preservation methods. The finality of Anthem’s end highlights that these are not abstract concerns but pressing issues for the industry.

For now, the ending is absolute. The physical copies I bought are useless artifacts, their data trapped on a disc that connects to nothing. They are souvenirs of a story BioWare likely wants to forget, a misguided gamble that fundamentally changed the studio. Anthem’s legacy is one of stunning potential squandered, a costly lesson in live-service development, and a cautionary tale about what we lose when an online world goes dark forever. Its closure frames not just a game’s failure, but the fragile nature of the digital worlds we now inhabit.

(Source: Euro Gamer)