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Anthem's shutdown seemed inevitable. Released by BioWare in 2019, the game offered a hybrid of the studio's traditional RPG storytelling and loot-driven combat in the Destiny style, but both sides of the game undercut each other at every turn. It earned the worst Metacritic score for any game in BioWare's history, though it has a small cult of fans who latched onto the promise of its combat and flight gameplay. Those fans are now preparing their mourning rituals for the game's impending death.
While Anthem is technically fully playable in single-player, it requires a constant internet connection – which means that once servers shut down on January 12, you'll no longer be able to hop in. With that date now less than a week away, fans are getting in the final bits of playtime where they can, and the Anthem subreddit is starting to fill with players saying their final goodbyes.
"One last flight around Bastion" is the title of a popular post from user RobRagiel, who adds that "I enjoyed it till the end and I have a lot of good memories. It was an honor, Freelancers." The post includes a clip of a brief flight path, demonstrating what's certainly the game's brightest point.
There's currently no official way to buy Anthem on any platform if you're looking to join the players saying goodbye, but used copies of the console versions are abundant and PC keys remain available on grey market resale sites. "I should've bought coffee but eh why not," says EngineerFrosty6633 in a post showing off their new purchase of Anthem, which ran about five bucks – a minor slap of reality among those who remember pre-ordering the game back in 2019.
Another post asks if others are "still pissed off" about Anthem's shutdown. "This is the game that deserves the [No Man's Sky] treatment," Ok_Type3663 laments in a comment. Still another post suggests that fans "petition EA" to develop an offline patch for Anthem so that some part of it can live on, though it seems few have much hope such an effort would have much effect.
The PS4 version of Anthem launched to a Metacritic score of 54, by far the lowest of any BioWare release over the studio's storied history. (BioWare's second- and third-worst rated releases are the PC and Xbox One versions of Anthem, respectively.) Even the game's most ardent defenders wouldn't try to argue that it's flawless, though they've found things to latch onto, praising the combat and particularly the robust flight.
I played Anthem around launch, and I found it a pretty miserable experience from top to bottom even then. The combat, in my memory, was little more than a chaotic jumble of blasts from and against indistinct enemies. The much-ballyhooed flight system ended up just leaving you so distant from opponents that it was tough to even tell what was going on. And, of course, the issues with the game's pacing, structure, and storytelling are very well documented.
That doesn't mean I'm happy to see it die so completely, of course. Anthem remains an important artifact of the modern gaming industry – one of the most high-profile examples of what happens when a beloved studio tries to force itself into a live-service box. It marks a turning point for BioWare's reputation, and the repeated stories we've begun to hear about the development hell Anthem went through are going to have a lot less context when the memories of what the game was actually like begin to fade.
It's also a prime example of the kind of thing consumer rights efforts like Stop Killing Games are engaged in trying to prevent. Anthem sold some 5 million copies, and every player who bought the game – whether they ended up enjoying it or not – is about to have their access to it revoked.
Certainly, I'd never expect a publisher like EA to support a multiplayer game in perpetuity, but equally, there's something sad about seeing a game like Anthem – one which took so many years and so much work from developers to bring to life – disappear like some monument of sand, destroyed when the changing tide inevitably wipes out its foundations.
Someday all of the best online games will be dust in the wind.
