Just over a year after announcing their plan to revitalize the Anthem video game, BioWare has decided to cease work on the Anthem Next initiative, essentially abandoning all plans for future content updates. The game’s live service, essentially its online multiplayer and other related functionality, will remain active though.
A combination of factors seem to be behind the decision with the transition to employees working from home being one and a need to focus on more popular titles such as Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and even Star Wars: The Old Republic, which will celebrate its 10th anniversary this December, being the other.
“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,” BioWare’s Christian Dailey wrote in a blog post.
“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.”
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