‘Anthem’ Is the Latest Video Game Casualty. What Should End-of-Life Care Look Like for Games?

Electronic arts and Bioware will sunset on the Internet multiple players Anthem On January 12, which makes it outdated. “Anthem Bioware wrote in this announcement, on August 15, the game will disappear from the EA Play run menu: “It has been designed to be a title online only, so as soon as the servers disappear in non -connection, the game will not be playable.”

Currently, players cannot buy the coin inside the game, but they will be able to spend what they have until the servers are in a non -connection mode. Developers in Bioware who were working on Anthem It will not be lay off as a result of the end of the game. The news closing the game comes as the industry, which is already going through the turmoil, is facing increasing pressure from players to create “end of life” plans for service games.

AnthemAlmost seven years lasted, as the game struggled by the major guidance. It was widespread in 2019 by critics, who described it as uneven in its implementation, full of errors, and boring. While Bioware and EA were initially plans to fix the game after launch – known as a name Next hymn-Bioware boiled the project in 2021, citing Covid-19, to convert the focus into other games. Her live service continued to run.

On the Internet, fans in places such as EA’s official forums ask for a “undelive Anthem Even without servers. One of the players wrote: “The closure and removing the game that people who put money (especially without recovery) is a disturbing and dangerous precedent.” “If you bought a game, you should be able to play it.” Another player wrote that “leaving games like Anthem It completely disappears, also sends a dangerous message: that live service games can be eliminated, regardless of the amount of time or money that the players have invested. “

Video games disappear for many reasons, whether they are licensing problems, losing code or physical media, not playable. The developer’s decision to end AnthemThe server’s support talks about a problem specifically by stopping the killing of games, a movement of consumers outside the European Union, which says this practice destroys some titles unnecessarily. “An increasing number of video games is sold effectively as commodities – with no expiration date – but it is designed to be completely playing as soon as the support ends from the publisher.” This practice, the movement organizers claim, “not only harm customers, but also make preservation impossible.”

Stop killing games, you will not be able to do anything to stop the disappearance Anthem. The organization relies on petitions and tries to request government intervention – operations that cannot achieve results before January. However, the founder Ross Scott says that the sunset is “exactly the type we are trying to prevent.” The goal is to “break the course so that this does not continue in future games.”

For Scott and others from Stop Milling Games, the destruction of a video game – such as destroying each version of a book, album or movie – is a “cultural loss for society”, according to the group’s website. “While the least well -known video games are still worthy of basic protection against the complete and deliberate destruction of many of their work.” What they want is for companies to have backup plans that allow games to live in a playable form even if they must be taken in a non -connection mode.