For Anthem, the situation is becoming increasingly dire. The game is expected to remain online until early 2026, when the studio will pull the plug. Fans are already mourning, but for the former lead developer of the shooter, there may still be a glimmer of hope to save the game.
Who is talking about Anthem? This concerns the former lead developer of Anthem, Mark Darrah. He has already spoken on YouTube about the various issues facing the shooter and how these led to the ultimate downfall of Anthem.
In a new YouTube video, Mark Darrah was interviewed. The discussion mainly revolved around Dragon Age, but some points were also focused on the future of Anthem. According to him, it is possible to keep the shooter alive, but it is not that simple.
Fans need to make compromises
What does he say about Anthem? Despite the live-service aspect of Anthem, Mark Darrah was confident that the shooter would eventually come to an end. The flop only accelerated its fate.
Now, however, EA is left with a dead shooter and has to decide how to proceed. The solution: The servers for Anthem will be deactivated on January 12, 2026. For Mark Darrah, this could be avoided as there are means by which a game can exist without the constant support of the developers.
How could Anthem be saved? Here, the developer looks towards Bungie and Destiny. The loot shooter from the former Halo developers has a “peer-to-peer” hosting system, where a client-server from the developer is not necessary. This allows the game to exist even after the studio has shut down the servers and development.
In peer-to-peer connections, one player acts as the host of the session. The data traffic runs through this player, making the connection dependent on that player. This can lead to lags and disconnections.
A peer-to-peer system could have also been possible for Anthem, but according to Darrah, that was not within BioWare’s budget. Furthermore, fans would have had to make compromises, which Darrah describes as follows: “It would have become a uglier game, probably with more latency issues. It would have been a worse experience second to second to achieve something that essentially should never have been shut down.”
So there is a possible solution. The question is whether fans would choose this path if it compromises the player experience. You can find out more about the background of Anthem here: The initial plan for the classes of Anthem caused a great deal of trouble: “Someone just pulled that out of their ass”
