Anthem, and Stop Killing Games

Years ago, when I first had the idea of Nerfed Gamer News, there was a game that had a special place in my heart. When I began mocking up the homepage and article page, the feature image was the exact same image I'm using on this post right now.

Anthem is an.. Interesting game.

I'm not a big loot shooter fan, but I am a fan of mech suits, and Ironman was still a big fucking deal when the game came out, so being able to fly was also a bonus.

It's an absolute shame that EA botched it so hard, to the point that they tried to do an Anthem 2.0 revival (like Cyberpunk 2077), and then gave up.

I won't get into details on all the ways Anthem failed (MTX, incomplete story, performance issues at launch, grind), but what I will say is this: I still had fun with the game, and even beat it. It's gorgeous, and the flight and movement mechanics are some of the best in modern gaming.

And now it's going away.

There has been a small but dedicated fanbase for the game hoping and praying that EA will try again with the Anthem IP, but the odds of that happening are extremely slim.. And now, that same small but dedicated fanbase is hoping Stop Killing Games will save it.

Unfortunately, I'm going to bet it won't.

There's a number of factors that go into play here; I'm going to try to keep it simple, though, for my non-developer readers.

The "simplest" option would be for EA to release the software necessary to deploy a server. There are a number of reasons this probably won't work, but I'll point out two here: First, modern game servers can be a challenge to deploy.. Unlike the games of yester-years, where you could run a server on the same machine you're playing the game on, you may need to deploy to multiple servers just to have the base functionality. Granted, these can be virtualized in some cases, but the resource costs alone can be challenging.. Especially as rented server costs rise and server software changes (most importantly to ensure security, which also means patching the server code to fix what breaks/becomes vulnerable).

Additionally, a lot of games rely on licensed tech used in development of both the game itself and the server; Depending on the license agreement, that may not be transferable, let alone even perpetual, so you've got to either replace the assets/libraries/etc with something else, or folks deploying servers may need to pay for their own licenses.

It's a mess.

Now, here's the "ideal" option: Make Anthem single player.

While this would negate some gameplay functionality (since the game heavily pushed you into multiplayer.. More so than they pushed spending real money on literal finishes - not just colors, but fucking FINISHES on the metal frame of your exosuit), it would eliminate the headaches of deploying servers, server maintenance, etc etc..

.. It'd also require significant investment in developer time to modify the game to work in a single player format.

This. Is. Not. Easy.

I've worked as both a developer and in the game industry. There is no require_multiplayer = true; flag to toggle.

And given that the folks with enough experience in the code base to do these modifications have probably moved on/been fired/are working on something else, there's also the "Fuck, why did I code it like this?" issue (any time I come back to any code base after 3+ months of not touching it I experience this, and it's fucking annoying).

So, unfortunately, we come down to losing access to a game that still has something to offer in January 2026.

It sucks, and I really don't want it to disappear, but without developers thinking about the long-term from the start - which is what Stop Killing Games has the best chance of impacting so we stop losing these gems of gaming history - we're destined to find the games we paid for disappearing.. In many cases before their time.