Bioware Austin Studio Director Christian Dailey Says COVID-19 Pandemic Is Primarily To Blame.
Putting aside a few pre-release issues, the first Anthem seemed poised for greatness and took best selling game for February 2019. Shortly after its release though, the game started receiving heavy criticism from its fans. Labeled “woefully boring and sparse” it seemed that patches and bug fixes wouldn’t be enough.
Anthem was an online Multiplayer ARPG set on an unnamed planet where players assume the role of freelancers, heroic adventurers who wear powerful exosuits to defend humanity from the threats beyond their cities’ walls.
The game’s title refers to the Anthem of Creation, a powerful and mysterious force responsible for most of the extraordinary technology, phenomena, and threats in the world. In the main narrative, the player’s Freelancer is tasked with stopping the villainous Monitor from seizing control of the Anthem.
A few months after its initial release the studios announced that they had started development on a completely overhauled Anthem 2.0 (Aka Anthem NEXT). There have been some updates and announcements every few months but there has been no substantial news until now.

EA executives said in a Bloomberg report earlier this month that they would make a decision whether to pull the plug on the Anthem Reboot Project. Shortly afterward, Bioware’s Christian Dailey gave his statement officially announcing that development had been halted and resources would be allocated to other titles. Specifically, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Dailey explained that Bioware’s plans for 2020 were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and that they are simply not able to accomplish all of the goals that they had hoped to achieve, without putting undue stress on their workers.
Dailey further outlined Bioware’s plans to laser focus their efforts into creating the best Dragon Age and Mass Effect games that it can. These titles are more established and trusted by fans, so it’s just good business.
He did express true regret and applauded his team for the good work they had done thus far. He apologized to some of the more resilient fans who were still excited and hoping to see what they had been working on.
Then, of course, there are the more skeptical Anthem fans that say they saw this coming and that the cancellation is not surprising given EA’s track record of abandoning games as well as Studios.