Anthem director leaves BioWare

In February, Electronic Arts finally pulled the plug on BioWare's big-bust third-person shooter Anthem, declaring that "not everything we had planned as a studio before COVID-19 can be accomplished without putting undue stress on our teams." With its fate sealed, game director Jonathan Warner announced today that after nearly a decade at the studio, he's moving on to other things.

"So, today is my last day at BioWare, I’m moving on to do new things," Warner tweeted. "BioWare has been home to my grateful heart for nearly 10 years and I want to wish them all the best. DA ME and SWTOR are in good hands and I can’t wait to play from this side of the screen."

Along with Anthem, Warner is credited as game director on Mass Effect: Andromeda and as a producer on Mass Effect (for the Mass Effect Trilogy) and Mass Effect 3: Citadel, and his LinkedIn page also lists him as BioWare's chief of staff, a position he's held since May 2019. Prior to joining the studio, he was a producer at The Walt Disney Company and a test lead at Microsoft Games Studio.

Despite significant hype (remember the Neill Blomkamp short film?) and a modicum of pre-release promise, Anthem was a tremendous disappointment at launch, to the point that BioWare had to acknowledge that its issues were beyond the help of mere patches. In late 2019 it was reported that a "complete overhaul" was in the works, which BioWare eventually confirmed. But it was never able to gain meaningful traction, and the effort was abandoned in February.