Report: Later This Week, EA Is Going To Decide If Anthem Lives Or Dies

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EA still isn’t sure if it’s going to invest in massively overhauling its failed loot shooter Anthem, according to a new report by Bloomberg.

Instead, executives from the publisher are set to meet this week to decide whether it will abandon the BioWare game or not. The studio announced last year that approximately 30 people were still working on the game. Bloomberg reports that number would need to “at least triple” in order to overhaul the game and continue making new content for it.

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Released in early 2019, Anthem was pitched as a live service game whose world would keep evolving to tell new stories. Instead, its main story campaign felt incomplete, and the end game loot progression lacked enough content to keep players interested. Those core issues were in addition to tons of bugs and performance problems at the time of launch.

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In order to try to address these shortcomings, BioWare ended up delaying many of its planned post-launch updates and events. By the end of the year, Kotaku reported that BioWare was planning a No Man’s Sky: Next-style overhaul to try to make good on its original promise and vision. At the same time, many of the game’s top design leads had left the studio following Anthem’s especially messy development, which Kotaku previously reported was mired by indecision and crunch.

Throughout last year, BioWare Austin studio director Christian Dailey communicated with players via blog post about the ideas Anthem’s remaining team were playing around with in trying to reboot some of its core mechanics and progression. Last July, he revealed concept art for a new pirate faction for players to face off against. On the eve of Anthem’s second anniversary, its redemption arc, if there’s ever to be one, seems poised to be longer than most.