Anthem is finally, officially dead

Today at roughly 2:05 pm EST, almost seven years after launch, Anthem's last few players were unceremoniously booted from whatever launch bays, strongholds, and freeplay zones they lingered in. A popup informed them they'd lost connection to EA's servers. After a lengthy delay, any additional login attempts would fail, citing an "error retrieving Anthem live service data."

Anthem, BioWare's infamous looter shooter that had years ago become a byword for EA's development dysfunction and live service mismanagement, is now officially dead.

Players are informed that Anthem's servers are expiring for the final time. — (Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Our Anthem review back in February 2019 gave the ill-fated power armor RPG a 55, and its reception never grew much warmer. Flying in its Iron Man-esque mech suits was by far its most-loved feature, a take on armored aviation so delightful that it underlined Anthem's otherwise disjointed design every time your freelancer set metal foot on solid ground.

The disparity between Anthem's flight and its everything else, according to its own executive producer, was a crystallization of a development cycle that was plagued by stunted creative direction from its earliest stages.

Anthem's fortunes didn't improve after launch, as middling reception to post-release support led BioWare to pledge to "reinvent" the game. EA abandoned those plans a year later, ending ongoing development for Anthem in February 2021. After four years of quiet operation for those players who stuck with it, EA announced in July that today would be the day its plug was finally pulled.

Players gather in the launch bay in Anthem's final moments. — (Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Bouncing between Anthem livestreams in its final hours was like watching a microcosm of the Anthem experience. Future Games Show presenter and producer Jules Gill, who picked Anthem up for the first time last week, called flying and fighting with the Interceptor javelin class "so fun," particularly delighting in carving through strongholds. YouTuber and Monster Hunter guy Rurikhan waded through battles as a Colossus with visible glee, saying its shield smash and artillery shell were "so satisfying."

But in both cases, when the action gave way to navigating Anthem's rote quest design, stumbling story content, and generally shambolic presentation, it produced confusion, frustration, and fatigue.

The best summation of Anthem's final hours came from variety streamer DreadfulSapien, who had been in the middle of a stronghold bossfight when the servers went down.

"The poetic nature of it is that the game is unfinished, and we were not done playing it," DreadfulSapien said. "But now we are. And I think that's really unfortunate."

Lincoln has been writing about games for 12 years—unless you include the essays about procedural storytelling in Dwarf Fortress he convinced his college professors to accept. Leveraging the brainworms from a youth spent in World of Warcraft to write for sites like Waypoint, Polygon, and Fanbyte, Lincoln spent three years freelancing for PC Gamer before joining on as a full-time News Writer in 2024, bringing an expertise in Caves of Qud bird diplomacy, getting sons killed in Crusader Kings, and hitting dinosaurs with hammers in Monster Hunter.

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