Anthem

2019video gamedeclining

Anthem is BioWare's 2019 online action RPG that became notorious for a troubled development cycle, a March 2019 player-led boycott over a patched-out loot bug, and a Kotaku exposé detailing years of pre-production chaos at the studio.

gamingfail memesfandom discourse memesbackfire memes2019 memes

Overview

Anthem is an online co-op action RPG from BioWare and publisher Electronic Arts that launched on February 22nd, 20191. The game pairs an open sci-fi world with squad-based online play, and drew immediate comparisons to Bungie's Destiny2. It shipped with a Metacritic score of 556, BioWare's lowest-rated release since the studio was founded in 19951.

Its online reputation is less about the game itself and more about what happened around it. Within a few weeks of launch, a viral loot bug, a player-led boycott, and a Kotaku exposé of the game's chaotic development turned Anthem into a common gaming-forum reference point for a live-service launch gone wrong1.

How It Spread

Pre-launch demos gave Anthem its first big wave of attention. A VIP demo ran January 25th through 27th, 2019 for pre-order customers and Origin Access subscribers, followed by an open demo across PC, PS4, and Xbox One from February 1st through February 3rd3. By release day the game had built a large online presence, with over 260,000 Twitter followers and a subreddit that had grown past 149,000 subscribers since the 2017 E3 reveal4.

The turning point came a couple weeks after launch. On the weekend of March 9th, 2019, a server-side bug caused legendary and masterwork loot to drop far more often than intended2. Players loved it, since the entire point of the endgame is grinding for those tiers, but BioWare rolled the change back within hours2. On March 10th, a Redditor going by Afinda posted a call for players to boycott the game from March 11th through 15th, arguing that a visible drop in player counts would send a louder message than more Reddit threads, and the post pulled in over 12,000 upvotes4.

Forbes covered the boycott on March 12th, calling it "not really necessary given that the game itself in its current state will drive players away naturally"2. In early April, Kotaku's Jason Schreier published a lengthy report from former BioWare staff describing years of pre-production drift, mismanagement, and long crunch hours1. BioWare posted an official response the same day, dismissing much of the reporting but conceding "there is always room to improve" when it came to crunch5.

How to Use This Meme

"Anthem" gets used online less as a template and more as a shorthand. Gaming forums and journalists often invoke it as a comparison point when a big-budget live-service game launches in a messy state, pointing at Anthem's loot bug boycott and the Schreier exposé as the reference case for how quickly community sentiment can turn on a studio1.

Frequently Asked Questions

Anthem

2019video gamedeclining

Anthem is BioWare's 2019 online action RPG that became notorious for a troubled development cycle, a March 2019 player-led boycott over a patched-out loot bug, and a Kotaku exposé detailing years of pre-production chaos at the studio.

gaming fail memes fandom discourse memes backfire memes 2019 memes

Overview

Anthem is an online co-op action RPG from BioWare and publisher Electronic Arts that launched on February 22nd, 20191. The game pairs an open sci-fi world with squad-based online play, and drew immediate comparisons to Bungie's Destiny2. It shipped with a Metacritic score of 556, BioWare's lowest-rated release since the studio was founded in 19951.

Its online reputation is less about the game itself and more about what happened around it. Within a few weeks of launch, a viral loot bug, a player-led boycott, and a Kotaku exposé of the game's chaotic development turned Anthem into a common gaming-forum reference point for a live-service launch gone wrong1.

How It Spread

Pre-launch demos gave Anthem its first big wave of attention. A VIP demo ran January 25th through 27th, 2019 for pre-order customers and Origin Access subscribers, followed by an open demo across PC, PS4, and Xbox One from February 1st through February 3rd3. By release day the game had built a large online presence, with over 260,000 Twitter followers and a subreddit that had grown past 149,000 subscribers since the 2017 E3 reveal4.

The turning point came a couple weeks after launch. On the weekend of March 9th, 2019, a server-side bug caused legendary and masterwork loot to drop far more often than intended2. Players loved it, since the entire point of the endgame is grinding for those tiers, but BioWare rolled the change back within hours2. On March 10th, a Redditor going by Afinda posted a call for players to boycott the game from March 11th through 15th, arguing that a visible drop in player counts would send a louder message than more Reddit threads, and the post pulled in over 12,000 upvotes4.

Forbes covered the boycott on March 12th, calling it "not really necessary given that the game itself in its current state will drive players away naturally"2. In early April, Kotaku's Jason Schreier published a lengthy report from former BioWare staff describing years of pre-production drift, mismanagement, and long crunch hours1. BioWare posted an official response the same day, dismissing much of the reporting but conceding "there is always room to improve" when it came to crunch5.

How to Use This Meme

"Anthem" gets used online less as a template and more as a shorthand. Gaming forums and journalists often invoke it as a comparison point when a big-budget live-service game launches in a messy state, pointing at Anthem's loot bug boycott and the Schreier exposé as the reference case for how quickly community sentiment can turn on a studio1.

Frequently Asked Questions