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BioWare’s head of live service, Chad Robertson, has announced the company has shelved Anthem’s existing post-launch plans, called “Acts”, in order to focus on seasonal updates and “core issues” still plaguing the sci-fi shooter.
BioWare revised its development schedule for sci-fi looter shooter Anthem earlier this year, confirming it was “not going to hit all the goals” it had originally set out on its “Act 1 Calendar”, and now it seems things are set to change once more.
“We hear your concerns on core issues in Anthem and are acting on it,” Robertson wrote in a recent blog post. “Those systems require a more thorough review and re-working versus quick fixes. We’ve got a team working on that now, and early results are promising.
“In order to address these long-range plans, we are moving away from the Acts structure for updates,” Robertson added. “Instead, we have additional seasonal updates planned for this year that we think players will enjoy. These events will deliver challenges and chases similar to what you’ve seen, and are built around some fun themes we’re bringing to the game.”
Robertson finished on promising the developer would be “transparent” to players and acknowledged the team knows “more work needs to be done to make Anthem better”.
“We also want to ensure we’re backing up our words with a great game you can play. So I don’t have any news today to share about the long-term changes we are bringing to Anthem,” he concluded.
Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson confirmed that the publisher remained committed to BioWare’s Anthem in spite of the fact the sci-fi shooter “may not have had the start [EA] wanted” back in June. “IP lives for generations, and runs in these seven-to-ten year cycles,” Wilson said at the time. “So, if I think about Anthem on a seven-to-ten year cycle, it may not have had the start that many of us wanted, including our players. I feel like that team is really going to get there with something special and something great, because they’ve demonstrated that they can.”
A Kotaku investigation recently depicted an unhealthy culture at the acclaimed studio that included specific references to senior staff from a number of anonymous sources that intimated the studio lacked focus and drive throughout much of Anthem’s pre-production and production processes.
BioWare responded to claims of “problems in the development of Anthem and some of [its] previous projects” with both a public statement and an internal memo to all staff, acknowledging the workplace “problems are real” and pledged “to continue working to solve them”. The company also recently lost Anthem’s lead producer, Ben Irving, who left the studio after eight years, who cited an “exciting opportunity” as his reason for the departure.
