EA Kills Anthem: A BioWare Fan’s Five Stages Of Grief

2 weeks ago 4

Anthem, the ill-fated loot shooter from BioWare that marked a detour from the studio’s usual RPG output, shut down yesterday. Whether you downloaded it digitally or bought it on a disc for a penny, you can never play it again. Its servers are down, and BioWare and publisher EA didn’t give the game an offline mode before tossing it into a chasm.

While many of Anthem’s fans had long since hung up their javelins and bid farewell to Fort Tarsis, in the lead-up to the game’s shutdown some began scrambling to fire it up once more, wanting to fly around its world a few more times, snag some trophies they’d previously left unclaimed, and soak up the game’s lost potential one last time.

In the years since Anthem‘s launch in 2019, the game has been seen by some as a poster child for ill-advised pivots into live-service forever games, with studios making the shift in the hopes of creating the next Destiny, a game that could grab millions of players and hold onto them for years with constant updates, paid expansions, and microtransactions, a cash cow with a long lifespan. BioWare’s pivot away from producing its usual character-driven RPGs and into making a loot shooter was questionable at the time, but even if it ultimately failed to draw in the playerbase it would have needed to succeed commercially, there was a time when BioWare fans and newcomers alike were drawn in by its potential.

“Anthem looked like the answer to a question nobody had successfully answered yet,” Vinny, an Anthem fan, tells Kotaku. “I’ve played Destiny and had a clan for years. Anthem seemed like it could be the ‘Destiny killer.’ What if Iron Man could fly but also loot things and occasionally scream while free-falling into a canyon? The trailers sold this idea of freedom, power, and mystery. It felt ambitious in that reckless way where you think either ‘this will be incredible’ or ‘it will explode on the launch pad.’ I bought a ticket anyway and pre-ordered it.”

Even though a live-service loot shooter seemed outside of BioWare’s wheelhouse, long-time fans of the RPG studio were still willing to give it a shot in hopes that those live-service trappings might still contain another dense, character-driven story from the studio. Vinny says that Mass Effect had earned the studio possibly “too much trust” for him, and that buying Anthem was “like loaning your car to a friend who once returned it clean and with a full tank. You do not ask questions. You just hand over the keys.” Before Anthem launched, Vinny says he was “cautiously optimistic, which is gamer speak for already emotionally invested but pretending I am not.”

WordsMaybe, another long-time BioWare fan who had been playing the studio’s games since 2003’s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, tells Kotaku he was open to the company breaking off from its usual role-playing bread and butter, and that the switch-up in genre wasn’t as concerning to him as it might have been to others.

“I’m fine with developers [changing things up] if they genuinely have an interest in trying out new things,” he said. “I think that’s healthy. As someone who does creative work myself, I know that it can feel like doing the same thing all the time. A lot of those people who have been there for decades like doing something different.”

That willingness to see the studio work on something new and a hope that what the studio always did best would shine through overcame some of his concerns.

“Obviously, there was stuff that came out like, there’s not going to be a romance, there’s not going to be big choices in the same way, but I was like, ‘okay, well it’s still BioWare writing in terms of world building,’” he says. “Which is a really compelling thing about their writing; the lore of the world, all the factions and types of people, and how that stuff interacts, and you know, sometimes it has lots of baggage that comes with it, but it’s always interesting.”

For some, the hesitation wasn’t about BioWare changing genres, but its shift into the live-service market, known for its reliance on microtransactions and sometimes-predatory monetization schemes. Pimpy Shortstocking, a moderator for the Anthem Discord and owner of the now-defunct fansite Fort Tarsis, remembers hoping the game could dethrone Destiny, but having reservations about whether BioWare would employ the same predatory practices that some other live-service developers do.

“I was worried that they would take some of the wrong lessons from the industry and heavily monetize it,” he tells Kotaku. “I was more worried about the monetization part of it, not so much the loot shooter part of it. I was worried about it being EA and BioWare’s first foray into that kind of space. I thought [the monetization we got] was fine, all the stuff in the shop wasn’t egregious, I guess. It was relatively standard fare for what we had at the time.”

BioWare tried to communicate to its single-player RPG fans that Anthem might still have something for them, but as WordsMaybe points out, a lot of Anthem’s initial fans were people who weren’t interested in BioWare’s RPGs at all. That’s because ultimately, as much as BioWare claimed the game offered a solid experience to solo players with its “Strong alone, stronger together” tagline, it was a multiplayer game first and foremost.

IJN-Atago, an Anthem fan who had only recently started playing video games when the game launched, says they have fond memories of the game because it was one of the first they purchased with their own money as a teenager.

“This game was something right up my alley,” he says. “It has flying robot suits, an open world, and fighting against unknown enemies. Piloting an Iron-Man-like suit was the best part.”

All that excitement came crashing down when the game finally launched. The promise of a cooperative Iron Man simulator collided with repetitive missions, a lackluster story, an underdeveloped cast, and a nagging feeling that Anthem was caught between several conflicting design philosophies, ones that often felt at odds with what BioWare did best, and were outclassed by the game’s live-service contemporaries.

Shock

Pimpy Shortstocking recalls a wave of server issues on day one, with people’s PlayStations crashing and a sense of “dread” overtaking any excitement he and the friends he was teaming up with initially felt.

“The people around me don’t have the same patience I do, which is understandable,” he says. “I don’t feel like I’m the average person in terms of letting games slide by with technical issues. A lot of them dropped off immediately, and so I was like, ‘Okay, well, this co-op game I wanted to play with my friends is now a co-op game I have to play with strangers.’”

Even those who wanted to give Anthem a chance based on BioWare’s past accomplishments expressed disappointment in the writing and weren’t drawn in by the loot shooter loop.

“I was like ‘This really feels like Destiny, but less compelling,’” WordsMaybe says. “I [wasn’t] feeling the writing. Not that BioWare hasn’t had quippy writing throughout its history. It absolutely has, but like, your assistant character in the game…he very much felt like a Joss Whedon sort of whipster, with snarky and irreverent dialogue all the time. Nothing felt like it was being taken that seriously, so even on the tonal level of writing, it just wasn’t hitting for me.”

“I would say it’s probably my least favorite experience playing a BioWare game,” he continues. “Well, even saying ‘least favorite’ is probably giving it too much credit because ‘favorite’ being in that sentence is probably unearned.”

But it wasn’t all disappointment. For players like Vinny, Anthem’s launch was an imperfect spark of something that could have been much greater.

“There was genuine excitement,” Vinny says. “The first flight was magic. For a moment, I thought, ‘Okay, this might actually work.’ Then the cracks started showing. But that initial feeling was real. Anthem could feel incredible minute to minute, even when everything around it was [held together by] duct tape, crossed fingers, and empty promises ultimately.”

Bargaining

Though many players had already moved on by the time it came out that BioWare was planning a complete revamp of Anthem at the end of 2019, some fans like Vinny felt “real honest hope.” Games like No Man’s Sky and Final Fantasy XIV had already enjoyed their own dramatic redemption arcs, and it seemed like Anthem, which some players felt had strong fundamentals but just needed more shaping, was an obvious candidate for such a comeback.

“Anthem had such a strong core that a rework felt justified,” Vinny said. “It felt like the game was being taken into the back room for surgery instead of being quietly wheeled out to the dumpster.”

Pimpy Shortstocking remembered feeling optimistic at the time as well. BioWare gave players a few pre-release updates about what Anthem 2.0 had in store, helping to put him at ease. Whether it was in new factions like the Pirates of the Blood Wind group that would help fill out the world, or in smaller quality-of-life features like a mass salvage function to more easily manage your inventory, the 2.0 update held a lot of promise. But as a moderator of the Anthem Discord, he saw firsthand just how rabid fans were getting over what they perceived to be unmet promises, and when it became clear that none of this would see the light of day, he recalls a lot of drama and anger.

Anger

On February 24, 2021, BioWare announced that it would not be moving forward with its plan to reboot Anthem. This shift had a ripple effect within the studio, with the company reportedly pivoting its planned live-service Dragon Age game into a single-player RPG, which would eventually launch three years later. While Dragon Age fans had plenty of reason to rejoice, whatever remained of Anthem’s fans were not happy to have waited two years for nothing.

“It was just a mess,” Pimpy Shortstocking says about the official Discord reaction. “We dealt with death threats, not just towards the devs but to the moderator team, even though again I want to be clear, the moderator team on that Discord did not work for BioWare.”

Pimpy Shortstocking was part of a team of moderators that helped the team in the Discord by collecting community feedback, and despite repeated pleas from the mods to be civil, “gamers be gaming,” he says. The game’s subreddit, meanwhile, he says, was “not as bad,” though there were plenty of players expressing disappointment or wanting their money back. “Then it just kind of died. Nobody posted on the Reddit anymore.”

“That one hurt, and it wasn’t surprising,” Vinny says. “It felt like watching someone give up halfway through an apology, then insult you again. There was disappointment but also resignation. At that point, it was clear Anthem was not going to get the second chance it deserved. I felt let down, honestly.”

Depression

Eventually, what was left of Anthem’s community scattered to the winds, and the game became a warning for other studios looking to jump onto the live-service trend. For many years, it felt like Anthem was only ever brought up if it was being propped up as an example, but some fans still kicked around Fort Tarsis every now and then, posting on subreddits and trying to excise water from the stone.

That’s changed, however slightly, in the past few weeks. BioWare announced last year that it would be shutting down Anthem’s servers on January 12, with no plans to offer an offline version of the game to those who bought it on vibes and a promise seven years ago. Finding themselves with just hours left before it disappears forever, fans have been booting the game up for one last ride.

“[I’ve felt] mostly nostalgia mixed with frustration,” Vinny says. “I have been jumping back in more lately just to soak it in before it’s gone. Flying one last time, taking screenshots, remembering what could have been. It feels like visiting a place you loved that is about to be demolished.”

Pimpy Shortstocking, meanwhile, was mostly “fine” when the announcement came that the game was being well and truly wiped out, even if it did pick at old wounds from every other game he’s liked that’s been canceled.

“I could just move on,” he says. “It’s just a video game, that happens. All these games that I’m excited for usually get canceled because it’s ‘not the market’ or ‘the market’s not there for it.’ Which I understand, but at the same time, can I like something without it being thrown away?”

WordsMaybe said he wasn’t surprised by the shutdown, though he is opposed to it on the grounds of preservation.

“Even successful games eventually run their lifespan for online service games, even though I disagree with the general notion for the sake of preservation,” he says. “It’s sad to think about because there are certain games that I have wanted to play [but can’t]. Even though Anthem‘s not a good game, I still think it deserves some life and people being able to still check it out, [to say], ‘I’m curious about BioWare stuff. I’m curious about the historical value of what Anthem was,’ and now people just won’t get that.”

When I conducted these interviews, I asked everyone if they had something to remember Anthem by, as the game would disappear forever, and for most of these players, the answer was their memories. Pimpy Shortstocking mentioned that he had an Anthem shirt with a tanky Colossus Javelin on it, an art book, a soundtrack, messages he sent about his fan site, and the friendships he made with the developers while working as a mod. Some of these things are tangible proof that Anthem was here, but by and large, when a video game is wiped from existence, all we have are the memories we made, and the haunting truth is that memories fade.

Acceptance

Anthem has officially shut down, and at the moment, BioWare hasn’t said a word about it since the original announcement. It seems that the studio and EA are willing to let the game go quietly into the night without so much as an acknowledgement. So players had to create their own.

Since the announcement that BioWare and EA would be shutting down Anthem, players like IJN-Atago have been logging onto places like the game’s subreddit and dedicated Discord for another trip to Fort Tarsis and posting goodbye messages showing their freelancers in the game’s world one last time. IJN-Atago posted a clip of them earning the game’s Platinum trophy on PlayStation, which is unlocked by completing every other trophy in the game. Once the game is shut down, no one will be able to acquire that Platinum again, which will make it rare among trophy hunters.

WordsMaybe, meanwhile, is one of the players documenting the game’s final hours in video form. It will only be from his perspective, but he and others plan on being there when the sun finally sets.

“I’m sure other people will do the same thing,” he says. “I’m sure I’m not the only person that had this idea, especially with the current conversation around game preservation being a lot more active than it was 20 years ago. Even if it’s just that, I want to record that from my perspective and have some degree of preservation of that moment.”

Though WordsMaybe says there may be a point down the line when fans are able to reverse-engineer Anthem and get it running on private servers, , for now, the moments that players have captured during the game’s lifespan will be all that’s left of it. Though the BioWare community at large may not have taken to it, and several prominent creators in the Mass Effect and Dragon Age communities have been pretty silent about the game, those who saw potential in what BioWare was building have logged on to pay their respects.

“You can’t ever really recreate that moment with these online games,” WordsMaybe continues. “You can’t recreate the experience even if you theoretically get some sort of single-player version of the game up; it’s never going to be Anthem as it was. So how do you give people more than just, ‘here’s a video of what it was like’? Obviously, [the] only [thing in my] ability right now is just ‘here’s a video,’ but at least it’s something.

To some subsets of the general gaming community, Anthem has been a laughingstock, a symbol of both the live-service crash and of BioWare having seemingly lost its way. WordsMaybe says that he believes the hate for the game and BioWare feels indicative of a larger, more toxic attitude toward the studio and the oddly smug attitude people have toward games they don’t like or were never going to play in the first place.

“The industry right now is just such a mess,” he says. “It kind of pains me a little bit to see more general outlets or people on social media like [Wario64] who post ‘Hey, Anthem‘s being shut down,’ and you’ll see in the replies, ‘good riddance, blah blah blah, who cares?’ I still think we need to have a degree of care for even the bad games that are going through this stuff. It’s the same thing that happened with Concord. That was somebody’s life for a long time. It’s sad to see stuff go and people gloating about it. Especially considering the state of online discourse, which is very right-wing leaning or made up of reactionary people. The views on BioWare as this ‘horrible woke company that deserves whatever fate it gets’ right now are just sad.”

WordsMaybe takes it a step further and says he believes that the narrative of Anthem as an entirely uncharacteristic pivot for BioWare is ignorant of the studio’s history and is “misguided,” considering its history of including multiplayer elements in its games as far back as the original Baldur’s Gate.

“It wasn’t just, like, this deeply cynical thing of EA just being like at gunpoint, ‘no, you must make a live-service game, RPG developer,’” he says. “I think a lot of the narrative around BioWare and so many things is deeply misguided and doesn’t really fully understand the big picture of things sometimes, and that’s such an instance.”

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While some fans are taking steps to preserve its final moments as best they can, ultimately, Anthem has concluded as what Vinny calls an “unfinished promise.”

“In the end, Anthem will be remembered the same way we remember that one friend who could do backflips but never showed up to work on time: incredible talent, but questionable follow-through,” Vinny says. “We loved it anyway. We will miss the flying, the chaos, and the brief moments where it felt like the future had arrived early. Anthem did not crash and burn. It hovered beautifully, ran out of fuel, and gently face-planted into gaming history with style. Anthem left us let down, not because of the game, but because they had something special and just quit. Anthem deserved better, and fans deserve better. Anthem will not be remembered for what it was but for what it almost became, and that might be the most heartbreaking legacy a game can have.”