BioWare spent seven years on Anthem — it sold half of what EA expected and was abandoned

BioWare, the celebrated Canadian RPG studio behind Baldur's Gate, Mass Effect and Dragon Age, began work on Anthem in 2012. The project was conceived as a shared-world shooter in the mould of Destiny, a genre the studio had never attempted. Development suffered from a lack of clear direction for years — the team had no firm idea of the game's core concept until late in the cycle.

The Frostbite engine, mandated by EA across all its studios, proved difficult for a story-driven RPG developer. Key BioWare staff familiar with the engine were reassigned to support the FIFA series in 2016. The game's story was rewritten multiple times, and a 2016 Christmas demo was so poor that EA's Patrick Söderlund ordered senior staff to fly to Sweden to fix it. BioWare feared the game would be cancelled if a second demo did not impress. Most of the game was effectively built in the final year before release.

Anthem launched on February 22, 2019, to mixed reviews — Metacritic scores of 54–65 across platforms. Critics cited a tedious grind, shallow gameplay, repetitive missions, a disjointed story, and loading screens of up to five minutes. Launch-week physical sales in the UK were half of Mass Effect: Andromeda's. EA had set a target of 6 million copies by the end of March 2019; the game sold over 5 million lifetime but missed that goal. EA CEO Andrew Wilson acknowledged the game did not reach its sales target.

EA initially committed to post-launch content, but a planned 'Cataclysm' event was delayed, and seasonal updates were dropped in favour of a 'substantial reinvention' of the core game. That reinvention was cancelled in February 2021, and all development ceased. The game's servers were shut down on January 12, 2026, rendering it unplayable. BioWare's reputation, built over two decades, was severely damaged — the studio that had defined the narrative RPG genre had delivered a live-service game that satisfied neither its core audience nor the new one it chased.