Beleaguered EA live-service title Anthem is being taken offline early next year, and fans are calling for action to prevent the game from entirely disappearing into the ether.

To that end, a new petition concerning Anthem's preservation has surfaced online and accumulated several hundred signatures already.

Developed by BioWare and published by EA, Anthem launched in 2019 to mixed reviews, with criticisms mostly centered around the game's story, grind-heavy design, technical issues, live-service elements, etc. Despite accruing lots of praise for its flight gameplay and combat mechanics, Anthem ultimately failed to attract a sizable player base and fell short of EA's commercial expectations. BioWare effectively canceled future plans for Anthem in 2021, a mere two years after the game launched.

With virtually zero support from BioWare and a miniscule (but dedicated) player base, it came as no surprise when EA recently announced that Anthem will be fully unplayable starting January 12, 2026, as servers will be permanently shut down.

In the days following this announcement, fans launched a Change.org petition requesting EA to "save Anthem" by releasing the game's server files or dedicated binaries as an optional DLC, as well as removing microtransactions and integrating their content into the standard loot pool to make all in-game items obtainable through gameplay.

Anthem Petition Garners Nearly 700 Signatures, With Many Linking it to the Stop Killing Games Initiative

Though modest in size - just over 690 signatures at the time of writing - the Anthem petition has gained attention by linking to the much larger "Stop Killing Games" campaign. Stop Killing Games has been in the news lately for accruing over 1 million supporters, with the consumer movement aiming to make it illegal for publishers to pull access to purchased games without offering an offline alternative or community-supported solution.

The European Union's IT sector has reportedly taken notice of Stop Killing Games, though there's been no official legislative action surrounding the initiative yet.

Still, Anthem's forthcoming server closure perfectly illustrates what Stop Killing Games is all about. Anthem was built from the outset as an online-only live-service title that can't function without server-side interactions - even for single-player content - and so the minute EA takes it offline, any amount of money players invested in the game will vanish alongside it.

Developing an offline mode for Anthem would likely require substantial resources that EA simply appears unwilling to invest in, and giving away the game's inherent (and potentially proprietary) server code might not be worth consideration for the gaming giant either.

Source - Gamerant 

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