Anthem is dead after the game's shutdown, but it doesn't have to be — lead dev reveals code for private servers exists, "there to be salvaged and recovered"

Earlier this week, publisher Electronic Arts made the decision to shut down Anthem — its 2019 live-service, third-person shooter that revolved around customizing, exploring, and fighting in an armored Iron Man-style "Javelin" suit on a vibrant alien world. It's no longer playable across Xbox, Windows PC, and PlayStation as of January 12, as the servers have been taken offline permanently.

Players (and EA, too, I'm sure) had lofty expectations for Anthem, as it was built by Mass Effect and Dragon Age maker BioWare and showed a lot of promise. Despite its impressive visual fidelity and how fun it was to control its suits, though, Anthem would ultimately nosedive shortly after launch due to technical issues, an extremely underwhelming story, bland loot systems, and grindy, unrewarding gameplay loops.

After Anthem Next — a huge overhaul built to revitalize the game — was canceled in 2021 and BioWare's development efforts shifted to Dragon Age: The Veilguard and the next Mass Effect, Anthem's fate was sealed, its shutdown date was announced, and now that day has come. But while the game is now dead, maybe it doesn't have to stay that way.

Near the end of an almost 4-hour long post-mortem video on Anthem (the full video is fascinating, so give it a watch), former BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah revealed that internally at the studio, the shooter had code for local play and private server use until a few months before launch. Presumably, it's still there to be "salvaged and recovered."

"Anthem actually had the code for local servers running in a dev environment right up until a few months up to launch," Darrah commented. "I don't know that they still work but the code is there to be salvaged and recovered."

That suggests the possibility — however slim the chances are — of fans getting private servers for Anthem that utilize their own PC rigs up and running one day. Notably, it also ties into an interesting idea Darrah has for the future of the game that would reimagine it as more of a narratively driven, traditional BioWare experience.

That plan, supported by a proposed $10 million budget, would involve updating the game to achieve 60 FPS on current-gen consoles and with the latest and greatest effects and options on PC, then transitioning the game to private servers before making a "Pivot to something that's more about single-player storytelling."

If you didn't have players with you, Darrah suggests having AI allies joining your squad instead, and "since this is BioWare," he recommends going "all the way into making them companions" with actual personalities and character depth. This, he says, would ultimately restructure Anthem into something more reminiscent of BioWare's other works.

"What you've essentially re-engineered is a BioWare game without romances, with a decent BioWare story, with companions, that can be played as a single-player game," he explained. "For a pretty modest amount of work you could effectively create a brand new single-player game from what already exists for this game."

Of course, the odds of something like this actually happening are very, very low. "Is EA going to do this? Almost definitely not," Darrah concluded. Indeed, it seems the publisher is eager to put the messy, troubled development and handling of Anthem behind it, so I can't imagine EA would ever support or fund an initiative like this.

The firm releasing the aforementioned code for private server hosting support publicly — assuming it still works — seems a bit more likely, but not probable. Still, perhaps dedicated community members will engineer it themselves in time; fans have custom servers working in the KYBER mod for Star Wars: Battlefront II, and the Northstar mod for Titanfall 2, after all, and both are EA games.

If Anthem got support for local and/or private servers, would you play the game? Did you play Anthem when it was still available, and if so, what did you think of it? Let me know in the comments.

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