Electronic Arts (EA) has officially canceled BioWare’s planned revision of its Anthem multiplayer shooter.
In a blog post, Christian Dailey, Executive Producer of BioWare Austin, attributed the cancellation to development hurdles related to COVID-19 and a desire to renew the team’s focus on other projects.
“However, 2020 was a year unlike any other and while we continue to make progress on all of our gaming projects at BioWare, working from home during the pandemic has had an impact on our productivity and not on everything that we had planned as a studio prior to COVID-19. it can be accomplished without putting undue stress on our teams, ”wrote Dailey.
He noted that development had started on the review, also known as ‘Anthem Next’, in late 2019 and that the team had been “doing a brilliant job” on it.
“Game development is difficult. Decisions like these are not easy, ”Dailey said. “In the future, we must focus our efforts as a studio and strengthen the next era of the dragon, Y Massive effect titles while still providing quality updates to Star Wars, The Old Republic. “
Anthem It was originally developed by the main BioWare team in Edmonton and released in February 2019. However, the game received negative reviews for a general lack of content, a light story, a shallow ending, and more. After a series of updates shortly after launch, Anthem received minimal post-launch support until February 2020, when then-BioWare CEO Casey Hudson confirmed that a The “substantial reinvention” had begun to improve the game..
This relaunch was taken over by BioWare Austin, the studio behind Star Wars, The Old Republic, due to its more extensive experience with multiplayer games than the Edmonton team, historically focused on the single player experience.
Since then, BioWare Edmonton has shifted its focus to new era of the dragon Y Massive effect games, as well as a remastered collection of the original Massive effect trilogy to be released in May.
Dailey says AnthemThe servers will remain active so that players can continue to access the game “as it exists today.”
Source: EA