The rumours were true once again: Electronic Arts is no longer funding the second version of Anthem – instead, the money and the efforts will be used on another title.

BioWare announced a year ago that the live service title Anthem will pull the handbrake with its updates so that the team can begin concentrating on reworking the game that essentially launched in an incomplete and rushed format. Then, this February, we heard that BioWare’s and Electronic Arts’ leadership will discuss the game’s future. And now, we have Christian Dailey’s blog post – let’s see what the executive producer of BioWare Austin had to say.

„In the spirit of transparency and closure, we wanted to share that we’ve made the difficult decision to stop our new development work on Anthem (aka Anthem NEXT). We will, however, continue to keep the Anthem live service running as it exists today. Since Anthem’s launch, the team has been working hard to continually improve the game, releasing multiple updates that brought with them a variety of improvements and introduced new content to play. Towards the end of 2019, we expanded on that effort and started working on a more fundamental restructuring of the game.

During the development, we’ve provided updates revealing some of the team’s work through blog posts and conversations with you on social media and it’s been inspiring for us to see the positive reactions and feedback. I’ve been incredibly proud of the work the team has been doing, and excited to see and play each new build of the experience. 2020 was a year unlike any other however and while we continue to make progress against all our game projects at BioWare, working from home during the pandemic has had an impact on our productivity and not everything we had planned as a studio before COVID-19 can be accomplished without putting undue stress on our teams.

I know this will be disappointing to the community of Anthem players who have been excited to see the improvements we’ve been working on. It’s also disappointing for the team who were doing brilliant work. And for me, Anthem is what brought me to BioWare, and the last two years have been some of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my career. Game development is hard. Decisions like these are not easy. Moving forward, we need to laser focus our efforts as a studio and strengthen the next Dragon Age and Mass Effect titles while continuing to provide quality updates to Star Wars: The Old Republic.

To the Anthem community, thank you for your passion and creativity. Your feedback and suggestions most certainly help shape the team’s direction, and on a personal note, your kindness and encouragement were much needed last year. Please stay safe and be kind to each other. Strong alone, stronger together,” Dailey wrote.

And with that, Anthem will continue to get updates, but its overhaul is not happening. Dragon Age 4 will get more attention instead, and that seems to be the right choice.

Source: Gematsu