Anthem
Genre: Action
Release date: Friday 22nd February 2019
Developer Dishonesty
Gamers on social media declared that the developers and/or publishers engaged in the anti-consumer practice of promoting and launching this game with full knowledge that it was in an incomplete and/or unfit state. This can include the game launching with missing features that were promoted in pre-launch marketing, or featuring game-breaking bugs that cripple the user's ability to play the game. Gamers on social media declared that in this situation, the developers and/or publishers knowingly lied to their paying customers in their pre-launch marketing and treated them as unpaid testers post-launch View more games with this featureBugs
This title launched with severe bugs that crippled the user's ability to play the game. These bugs could cause the game to crash, lose player progression or even potentially harm the system on which the game is being played View more games with this featureIncludes Macrotransactions
This game features an internal shop that allows users to spend money on items costing above $10, that cannot be considered micro-transactions View more games with this featureTime-Limited Virtual Items
Virtual items which are only purchasable for a limited time, encouraging users to spend money before the items are no longer available View more games with this featureIncludes Microtransactions
This game features an internal shop that allows users to spend money on items costing below $10 View more games with this featurePre-order Bonuses
This game offers bonus content to incentify players to pre-order the title before its release date. This means that if players wish to gain access to this content, they must forgo the ability to read reviews and bug reports in order to check the quality of the product before they purchase. Once launched, the pre-order bonuses are often unobtainable, meaning even though players will pay the same price, they will miss out on the content altogether. View more games with this featurePurchasable In-Game Virtual Currency
Virtual currency acquired through cash purchases, designed to create a psychological disconnect between spending real money on in-game items vs spending the virtual currency on items View more games with this featurePurchasable Cosmetic Items
This game features an internal shop with optional cosmetic items than do not effect gameplay. These may include skins, shaders, aesthetic items such as pets or mounts View more games with this featureSuitable for Teen Gamers
This game may contain content such as moderate violence, mild use of language, mild sexual themes, and crude humor View more games with this featureSingle Player
This is a game features a single-player experience where input from only one player is required View more games with this featureOnline Multiplayer
This game features an online multiplayer mode in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, online over the internet View more games with this featureAnthem is an online multiplayer action role-playing video game developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts. The game was released worldwide for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on February 22, 2019.
Anthem received wide criticism from critics and players for the downgraded graphics when compared to the promotional trailer used to announce the title at E3 in 2017, which opened with the text “Everything you are about to see captured in-game running in real-time”. As soon as the game launched, players took time to post videos comparing the very obviously downgraded graphics of the final launch version of the game when compared to the 2017 announcement trailer.
The E3 announcement trailer and subsequent trailers that were released all the way up until launch touted many core features that were also missing from the final version of the game, such as the mastery system, guilds, legendary missions, stronghold challenges, leaderboards, freeplay events, and the much vaunted Cataclysm event. Post-launch saw a complete shutdown of communication from developers BioWare, causing more outrage as customers continued to experience game-breaking bugs, crashes, lost progression and some PS4 owners even claiming that their consoles had been ‘bricked’ by the game. Even customers who weren’t experiencing game-breaking bugs were spending their time in-game disapointingly discovering all of the features that were missing.
Overall, gamers on social media were outraged that the game not only launched broken, but was a shadow of what was promised in pre-launch marketing. BioWare staff spent their time pre-launch gleefully boasting about features that would make Anthem tower over rival games, but instead launched a game that was at best, a pretty tech demo and at worst, a buggy mess.