The gaming industry has several fan-favorite developers, with one of the most beloved being BioWare. The studio behind Dragon Age and Mass Effect has pleased fans with its RPGs, although not every title has been without missteps. The launch of its ongoing online game Anthem was considered to have fallen short of expectations, with critical and audience receptions being mixed. With the promise of a significant overhaul referred to as Anthem Next, some Anthem loyalists held hopes for its future. Sadly, it appears this will not be the case, as BioWare has announced that they will cease development on the upcoming project.

An update on Anthem from Christian Dailey: https://t.co/twmWXAXj3B

— BioWare (@bioware) February 24, 2021

As reported by Game Informer, BioWare’s Christian Dailey made the announcement regarding Anthem Next in a new blog post. Dailey described the past two years of development on Next and the hard work that the team at BioWare has done for the game to improve it. However, Dailey also suggested the team’s shift towards working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic has made development slower and more difficult. As such, BioWare has decided to cease further development for Anthem. As he states:

In the spirit of transparency and closure we wanted to share that we’ve made the difficult decision to stop our new development work on Anthem (aka Anthem NEXT). We will, however, continue to keep the Anthem live service running as it exists today.”

While this means the promised top-to-bottom rework that would have been comprised Anthem Next is now essentially scrapped, this suggests that the online gameplay support for Anthem will continue on for a while. Dailey also expressed that this decision will allow BioWare to focus on the new Dragon Age and Mass Effect games that are in the works, and to ensure quality work for them. Anthem certainly has had its problems, many of which likely stemming from business decisions from publisher EA, but it showed a lot of promise that likely would’ve been fulfilled with Anthem Next. While it is sad to see those hopes shattered, hopefully, this means that the future Dragon Age and Mass Effect games coming out blow us away that much more.

What do you guys think about BioWare cancelling Anthem Next? Let us know in the comments below! Be sure to stay tuned for the latest BioWare news, such as the Mass Effect Legendary Edition dev explaining why the remaster will not have story changes, here on Don’t Feed the Gamers! Follow us on Twitter to see our updates the minute they go live!