Anthem
by BioWare / Electronic Arts
About the Game
A live-service co-op action RPG where players pilot exo-suits called Javelins across an alien world. Developed by BioWare following Mass Effect: Andromeda.
Why the Developer Killed It
Full Rework Cancelled Mid-Development
EA invested over a year into 'Anthem Next', a ground-up redesign. It was cancelled without announcement on February 24 2021. Players who had been waiting for the promised improvement were given nothing.
Critically Broken at Launch
The game launched with severe loot system failures, progression dead-ends, and performance crashes on PS4. Multiple high-profile patches attempted to fix fundamental design issues rather than add content.
Live-Service Economy Abandoned Mid-Season
Anthem operated a live-service seasonal model with premium cosmetics and battle pass equivalents. Paid content was sold while the studio was secretly rebuilding the game — and then everything stopped.
Anthem launched in February 2019 carrying the full weight of a BioWare release — a studio that had built Mass Effect and Dragon Age into beloved franchises. The result was a game with a genuinely compelling movement system and almost nothing else working: the loot, the story, the end-game, and the live-service loop were all either broken or empty. EA's response was to greenlight a complete rebuild internally called 'Anthem Next'.
For over a year, BioWare's senior team worked on that overhaul. Players who had followed the game's forums and development updates waited, having been told that Anthem Next would address the fundamental issues. On February 24 2021, without a public announcement, EA cancelled the project. Bloomberg's Jason Schreier broke the story; EA's statement confirmed it two days later. The game was left in its 2020 state — technically playable, permanently broken, and without any live-service activity.
Anthem exists today on EA App as a ghost: the servers are running, the game boots, and it can technically be played. But the seasonal content loop is dead, no new content has arrived in years, and the player count has been in double digits for a long time. The people who bought premium cosmetics or the Legion of Dawn edition for $79.99 received a product that its own publisher decided was not worth maintaining. EA and BioWare moved on. The game did not.
Information sourced from public records, press coverage, and developer announcements.