Anthem 2.0 Canceled at BioWare, Servers For Current Game Remains Open

BioWare and publisher Electronic Arts has officially canceled development on redesigning Anthem in hopes to revitalize the online shooter. The game will remain as it is currently and the studio will retain the live service for the game.

The announcement was delivered to their community through a blog post in BioWare’s website, officially sealing the fate of the live service they were hoping to build upon since it’s release back in 2019.

“In the spirit of transparency and closure we wanted to share that we’ve made the difficult decision to stop our new development work on Anthem (aka Anthem NEXT). We will, however, continue to keep the Anthem live service running as it exists today.” says Christian Daily, executive producer at BioWare.

All efforts are now pointed towards the upcoming Dragon Age game, future Mass Effect titles, and maintain updates on Star War: The Old Republic.

The work done at BioWare after Anthem’s launch was dubbed Anthem 2.0 or Anthem NEXT as many were hoping the developers will turn things around with a complete overhaul of the game’s systems. In a May 2020 update, a small team of 30 were back in the drawing board making experiments and prototypes to improve where the game was lacking. Throughout 2020 — and during an ongoing COVID-19 pandemic — updates on Anthem 2.0 were scarce. When the team does have something to share, it’s concepts instead of something that can be patched in a couple of months.

Anthem launched on January 19, 2019 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. Servers will be on for those that want to fly around in their javalin but after this announcement, it’s only a matter of time until they make decision to pull the final plug.

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