EA’s multiplayer role-playing game is still on the new release list but after only being on the shelves for 6 months it’s already AU$15. Australian retailers know, Anthem is dead.
Anthem was a pretty hyped game when it was announced in 2017. It was supposed to be something new, and the developers who were behind it were respected and trusted, but, come launch, something went terrible wrong. What exactly though?
Did you know?
- Tom Holland will play Spider-Man in Venom movie.
- Modern Warfare open beta is coming soon to Xbox One.
That was the question on everybody’s mind when the game launched back in February, 2019. Anthem was a much hyped triple-A game from the studio responsible for some of the most loved game series; Mass Effect and Dragon Age. BioWare had earned their spot among the top developers of this generation, how could they fail?
This may seem odd, but the problem was EA’s leniency towards stress within BioWare. A lot of developers weren’t coping with their workload and were becoming stressed and, in turn, depressed. One employer took a two month paid vacation for personal leave because of stress, and this became the norm for the rest of the employees.
Dozens of developers, many of them decade-long veterans, have left BioWare over the past two years. Some who have worked at BioWare’s longest-running office in Edmonton talk about depression and anxiety. Many say they or their co-workers had to take “stress leave”—a doctor-mandated period of weeks or even months worth of vacation for their mental health. One former BioWare developer told me they would frequently find a private room in the office, shut the door, and just cry. “People were so angry and sad all the time.”
The problem, as outlined by the BioWare insider, is EA’s lack of leadership. They didn’t hire people based on qualification but rather just to diversify their team. If you force less qualified people to work at the same rate as a seasoned veterans, they are going to feel tremendous stress while struggling to keep up. But instead of standing firm, EA have decided to run their offices like a daycare for grown ups instead of a respectable business.
Anthem is dead
This resulted in Anthem launching with almost no content and buggy as hell. Yet, EA kept promising that there is still plenty of more content to be added to the game… but since then, they’ve gone completely silent. Almost as if the developers don’t want to deal with the game because it triggers PTSD.
YongYea pointed out that EA’s acting like Anthem is dead and doesn’t exist. All references to the game have pretty much scrubbed from EA’s books and actual fans within the Anthem community are left with unanswered question and awkward uncertainty.
Australian retailers are now desperately getting read of stock. JB HiFi initially dropped the price from AU$79 to AU$19, but that wasn’t enough to sell copies.
So they dropped it yet again to a measly AU$15, and these two big price drops happened after just 6 months. If EA’s inaction and there lack of response to the community outrage is anything to go by, then we can safely say that Anthem is dead and gone.