While Anthem wasn't well-loved at launch, it wasn't hated either. Steven Messner gave it a middling score of 55 in his review, which aligned with my own feeling of being a bit whelmed by a game with a clear identity crisis—a live service multiplayer game that wanted you and your friends to play strongholds together, but then return to a singleplayer hub where you'd have to shush during the story bits.
Even then Anthem had its diehards, and the patches and updates that followed addressed some of its more significant flaws. Not enough to save it unfortunately, but enough to guarantee a small but dedicated community of Freelancers who have suited up and returned to Fort Tarsis for the final day before EA pulls the plug on Anthem for good.
Our Lauren Morton is one of the players who logged on to say goodbye. "It's not empty," she says, "but it is quiet." There are Twitch streamers running missions until the end, and high-level veterans "waving and jumping and emoting" around the Launch Bay. The subreddit is full of players sharing their last screenshots and achievement pop-ups and quoting Anthem's tagline, "Strong alone, stronger together."
They're also praying for last-minute salvation, or an eventual revival via community-run private servers. As dinklebot117 points out, "avengers and suicide squad added offline modes before ending support. i believe redfall as well". When a less optimistic player said, "Great, Redfall. For the 5 people still playing it", dinklebot117 quite fairly replied, "bro we are in the anthem subreddit careful where you throw those stones".
Anthem's loss, whether it affects you or not, is another reason to value the message of the Stop Killing Games campaign. Messy though it was, Anthem had its fans, and now they're losing access to a thing they paid for and supported through to the end.
