EA's BioWare studio is no longer working on an updated version of Anthem, dubbed Anthem Next.

In a blog post, the game's executive producer Christian Dailey said that it had halted development on this new edition of the game, but said that the studio would continue to support the existing version of Anthem.

"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," Dailey wrote.

"It’s also disappointing for the team who were doing brilliant work. And for me personally, 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."

This follows a report from Bloomberg at the start of February which said that EA was deciding whether to continue work on this updated version of its sci-fi RPG. Rumours that BioWare was reworking Anthem broke in November 2019, before the studio confirmed the news the following February and later said it was prototyping ways to try and improve Anthem.

The game's initial development was reportedly rather chaotic and troubled, with the version of Anthem that shipped in February 2019 being in production for about 18 months before its release.

EA forecast that the game would shift six million copies between launch at the end of March 2019, a taarget Anthem failed to meet.