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Bioware has announced that it has made the difficult decision to to cease new development work on Anthem, effectively cancelling a planned reboot of the game.
In an update on the Bioware blog, the studio wrote "In the spirit of transparency and closure we wanted to share that we’ve made the difficult decision to stop our new development work on Anthem (aka Anthem NEXT). We will, however, continue to keep the Anthem live service running as it exists today."
In citing the reasons behind the decision, executive producer Christian Dailey added "2020 was a year unlike any other however and while we continue to make progress against all our game projects at BioWare, working from home during the pandemic has had an impact on our productivity and not everything we had planned as a studio before COVID-19 can be accomplished without putting undue stress on our teams."
Thanking players and the Anthem community for their support, Dailey said that "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."
Anthem had been struggling to retain players since its launch in 2019, with the reboot originally announced even before the game's first anniversary last year. Bioware's next release will be Mass Effect Legendary Edition, an enhanced version of the original Mass Effect trilogy set to launch on May 14.
An update on Anthem from Christian Dailey: https://t.co/twmWXAXj3B
— BioWare (@bioware) February 24, 2021
