Anthem has pulled the plug this week, and the game’s executive producer followed with a post-mortem video. Read on for Anthem's troubled history, their plans for an offline mode, and renewed calls for consumer rights.
Anthem’s Rocky Seven Years: Exec Darrah Sparks What-Ifs
Live Service Shooter Struggled Until Its Last Breath
Anthem's executive producer, Mark Darrah, released a post-mortem video after the live shooter was rendered permanently offline on January 12. In the almost four-hour-long video, Darrah reflected on BioWare's ill-fated online multiplayer game throughout its seven-year history.
Darrah recalled Anthem's earliest days when former BioWare general manager Casey Hudson first pitched the game as "FIFA, but BioWare" to Electronic Arts (EA). The multiplayer, live service genre became their solution to minimize development duration and budget requirements for Anthem. Later on, Hudson’s departure from the studio led to Darrah taking over the project.
Launched in February 2019 as a new franchise from the creators of Mass Effect, Anthem received a lukewarm reception and quickly became symbolic of BioWare's struggles. Darrah stated that the PS4 version's Metacritic score of 54 did not meet BioWare's standards of 70 and above. Similarly, in EA’s 2019 earnings report, then-EA CFO and COO Blake Jorgensen noted that the game fell short of its targeted sales, as well as underperformed in microtransactions.
A planned overhaul, titled Anthem Next, was scrapped in 2021 amid mounting stress on developers and pandemic-related challenges. "Anthem did permanent damage to the careers of a lot of game devs, to the mental health of a lot of game devs," Darrah said, "I think even with BioWare itself, you can trace some of the issues that it's had in more recent years back to this time period."
The fallout extended beyond Anthem. Bloomberg reported that Anthem’s failure led EA to cut multiplayer content from Dragon Age: The Veilguard in 2021.
Single-Player Reboot is Possible, but EA may Reject It
During Anthem's final days, players lamented the missed opportunities for the shooter game. They shared farewell clips and expressed their regret at having never witnessed Anthem’s much-praised flight mechanics brought to BioWare’s forefront. An online petition by fans to shift to an offline, single-player version of Anthem even reached more than 3,700 signatures as of writing.
Following the said outcry from fans, Darrah outlined a $10 million plan to reboot the game as a single-player RPG. He divided the proposal into three phases: upgrading Anthem's framework for newer consoles, utilizing existing local server code to enable offline access, and replacing the four-player squads with AI-controlled teammates.
Darrah remarked that they considered locally hosted servers at one point, but abandoned development before Anthem’s release. "I don't know that they still work, but the code is there to be salvaged and recovered. The reason you do this, it pulls away the costs of maintaining this game," he said, suggesting that offline play had always been possible.
However, Darrah acknowledged that EA will most likely reject the idea. Given that his proposal would require $10 million to push forward, he once again cited the original reason behind EA's pursuit of live service for Anthem: to cut costs as much as possible.
"Stop Killing Games" Uses Anthem as Example
While delving into his proposal of rebooting Anthem, Darrah tied his arguments to the Stop Killing Games movement in the United States. As a primer, Stop Killing Games is a preservation and consumer rights campaign launched in 2024 by YouTuber Ross Scott, following Ubisoft's shutdown of the racing game The Crew. Darrah emphasized the importance of keeping games in playable format, especially when considering players who have spent money to own a copy.
The official Twitter (X) account for Stop Killing Games also noted that Anthem's circumstances—from scrapped local servers to no refunds after ultimately shutting down—are primary examples of what they are fighting for.
"It really is as simple as the principle of one man's trash is another man's treasure," they replied in a thread. "If you put money into the game, you should have a voice on whether you get to keep it or not. You as the customer should have the final say as to when you're done with a game, not the company."
Darrah's revelations about Anthem's failed trajectory, dating back to 2011, have sparked ongoing community discussion about what EA and BioWare could have done better.
With the controversial shooter game now shelved, BioWare has shifted its attention to the next entry in the Mass Effect series, hoping to restore its reputation with fans and critics alike.
Source:
The Truth About What Happened on Anthem - Complete (2011-2026)
Anthem Metacritic reviews
EA’s 2019 Earnings Report
Electronic Arts Removes Multiplayer Mode From Dragon Age Game in Big Pivot
Twitter users lament Anthem
Petition - Save Anthem
Stop Killing Games tweet
BioWare N7 Day post
