BioWare announced that it is permanently halting the development of Anthem Next, which would have been a bottom-up transformation almost on a par with No Man’s Sky Next and Destiny: The Taken King. Anthem’s servers will continue to function normally, BioWare confirmed.
It is likely that a variety of factors contributed to BioWare’s decision to end Anthem development, but the COVID pandemic in particular and pressures to work from home were mentioned in Wednesday’s announcement.
“However, 2020 was a year unlike any other, and while we continue to make progress on all of our game projects on BioWare, working from home during the pandemic had an impact on our productivity and not everything we had planned as a studio. before COVID-19 it can be done without undue stress on our teams, “wrote Anthem executive producer Christian Dailey.
In the past few weeks, EA has reportedly struggled with decisions about how to deal with Anthem’s future. At the beginning of last year, the studio committed to a complete overhaul of Anthem in order to provide “a more satisfactory cashout experience, better long-term progression and a more rewarding final game”. But a recent Bloomberg report described a situation in which EA was unsure whether to fund Anthem Next.
In today’s announcement, Dailey said the decision to cancel Anthem Next “was not an easy one”, but explained that the studio needed all the resources to focus on upcoming games. “Moving forward, we need to focus our efforts as a studio and strengthen the upcoming Dragon Age and Mass Effect titles, while continuing to provide quality updates for Star Wars: The Old Republic,” said Dailey.
For everything on the horizon, don’t miss our summary of all new 2021 games and beyond.